Dusk To Dawn
by reighost
Summary: Harry Potter's life reached its end and turned to dusk. Sawada Tsunayoshi's life has yet to begin. A Sky from Dusk to Dawn. Harry reincarnated as Tsuna.
1. Chapter 1

WARNING: Angst, slash (Non-graphic, **no** sex scenes), mature themes, canon-derailment – a LOT.

Author's Note: This Plot Bunny literally jumped me out of nowhere and ambushed my face ala Facehugger. Wouldn't let me go till I finished writing! And of course I had to SHARE the idea with Araceil who had an idea of her own… XD

Just like how I stole(with permission) the original plot bunny for Under Wing Araceil has made off with the Plot Bunny for THIS fic, (like an anime panty-thief), and has run off cackling into the sunset with it(She also has permission). She's written her own version, a Twin-fic to this one where Harry doesn't die and Tsuna remains just Tsuna. Go read it, it's called Brightly Burning. Mine is done mostly from Harry's Pov, Araceil's is done mostly from Reborn's Pov.

Chapter 1

Harry knew he didn't have a lot of time left.

Fresh from the battle of Hogwarts he felt something off about himself. The way he moved. The way his body responded to him and more alarming was the way his magic was acting. The warmth that had been with him his entire life felt like it was seeping out of his every pore. He couldn't get warm enough. Exhaustion was constant. He couldn't sleep enough to recoup what he lost during the day and he couldn't drink enough Pepper Up to combat the loss.

Ignoring the niggling sense of unease had been easy during the first few days after defeating Voldemort. Everyone was tired. However as people began to recover and get dismissed from Madam Pomfrey's care a strong sense of discomfort lodged itself inside his chest and wouldn't move. He wasn't alright. He wasn't recovering despite Madam Pomfrey's insistence on continued bed rest.

The knowledge came to him from somewhere between a gut feeling and a voice of instinct. He just knew. He was dying. It was a truth he felt right down to his very core. He was dying and he didn't have a lot of time left. Madam Pomfrey, distracted and exhausted herself, wouldn't be able to save him and he knew she wouldn't have been able to save him had she been in perfect health.

He'd been living on borrowed time, sixteen more years than he would have if his mother hadn't sacrificed herself for him, and now he was running out. The Deathly Hallows had bought him enough time to kill Voldemort but it seemed like their fabled ability to cheat death was a temporary thing.

Leaving Hogwarts had been an easy decision and in the end he slipped away unnoticed. If he didn't have that much time left… then he was just going to have to use the time he had left wisely.

OoO

The goblins at Gringotts weren't happy to see him when he first arrived but they let him in the doors. Handing Gryffindor's Sword over to the guards that barred his way into the bank went a long way into soothing the feathers he'd ruffled stealing Voldemort's Horcrux out of Bellatrix's vault. He had a will written up. It was a simple thing that left everything he owned to the Weasleys, Teddy, Hermione and set up a trust fund for any magical children that Dudley or any of Dudley's children might have. Along with a few letters he spent the last few days writing he left his wand with the goblins and handed over his vault keys. He wasn't going to be needing them.

He left the bank with several thousand pounds of muggle money in his pocket and stumbled out into the muggle world and into the first high-end clothing store he found. He walked out leaving the a good chunk of his money behind, the pajamas he'd been wearing and the cloak he'd pilfered from Pomfrey. If he was going to die it might as well be in comfortable style.

What would everyone think of him? Dying right after earning himself the first breath of freedom he'd ever enjoyed? How laughably tragic.

Shivering into the thick folds of his new great coat Harry took a moment to admire his reflection as he walked past a boutique. He'd never worn anything like this in his life, the closest he came to it was his school uniform and even that was a far and distant cry from the suit he was wearing. Would he appear like this in front of his family? Wouldn't that surprise his parents, hell he surprised himself by 'cleaning up so nice' as the shop attendant had crooned at him. Remus would smile and Sirius would probably laugh at him for getting so gussied up.

Too bad the thickness of his coat wasn't doing much to alleviate the cold seeping into his body despite it's obviously high quality. The store attendant hadn't been surprised at his request for the warmest clothing they had in the store, the rain outside had given him excuse enough for it. The attendant had almost gasped at what he'd been wearing once he'd removed his cloak and had hurried to dress him once it was clear he had the money to afford the clothing he was attempting to buy.

One short lie, "My luggage was stolen from the airport!", and he was dressed in a charcoal suit with a light grey waistcoat, crisp white shirt, a warm orange tie (the closest he could get to Gryffindor red in the store) and a gold tie pin, a great coat a shade darker than the suit he was wearing, thick socks patterned with birds and polished black dress shoes. The finishing touch to the entire outfit was a handsome black fedora with an orange band matching the colour of his tie. Looking into a mirror after getting changed and he could hardly recognize himself. The shop assistants had been thoroughly impressed and one of the them had even tried to convince him to go out and get some new glasses.

"A frameless pair." The man insisted as he balled up his old clothing into a plastic bag to be thrown away. "Or contact lenses, your eyes are too gorgeous to hide behind such bulky lenses!"

"I'll think about it." Harry lied easily as he accepted a cream coloured scarf to wrap around his neck and tugged on a pair of thick gloves. Like his eyes were going to be a problem for much longer.

Now he was wandering around Muggle London. With no idea what to do with himself now that he'd settled his affairs and was now free to do whatever he wanted. What would a teenager his age do with himself at this time of night? With the amount of money he had… should he go out and watch a movie or something? Or considering his current form of sharp dress should he go and find himself a restaurant?

Stopping abruptly outside a bar Harry snorted to himself. Right, he knew what he wanted to do. He was going to drink away the last few hours of his life, maybe the alcohol would chase away some of the cold, he was close to shivering now. First of all though… there was something he needed to do. Needed to get off his chest.

Searching the room he'd stepped into his eyes swept along the walls before locating the payphone near the bar, uncaring of the furnishings or interior save for the fact it had what he was looking for. Pausing only long enough to beg change from the bored looking bartender Harry hurried over and fed the machine and punched out the Dursley's number. Might as well clear the air while he was still alive to do so.

The phone rang out and Harry belatedly realized that the Dursleys must still be in whatever safe-house the Order had stashed them away in. Leaning his head against the wall near the phone he gave himself a moment to wish that the Dursleys had an answering machine before he pulled out the phone book sitting on the little shelf next to the phone so he could start looking up names. If he couldn't reach the Dursleys then he'd just have to think outside the box. Piers was Dudley's friend, would probably continue to be friends with him when his cousin returned home.

He knew from an overheard conversation between his Aunt and Mrs Polkiss that the woman had 'invested' in an answering machine. Did they still have one? Punching in the number he found in the phone book Harry lifted the receiver up to his ear and waited, absently stacking the coins the barkeep had given him into a small tower.

"Hello. You have reached the household of the Polkiss family. Unfortunately we cannot take your call right now, but we would like to return it as soon as we can. So please leave your name, number and message after the beep and we'll get right back to you."

"Don't pick up the phone, Piers! Please." He immediately said at the prompt, somehow knowing that on the other end of the phone call that Piers Polkiss was a hairs breadth from picking up. "I… I don't think I'll be able to say… what I need to if there's... someone there. It's Harry. Dudley's cousin. I uh... I don't have a forwarding address for them so, I'm hoping that you'll be able to pass this message onto them since... I don't really have much longer left. Please tell them that it's safe now. The guys who killed Mum and Dad are gone, they caused a lot of damage, but we got them in the end so it's safe now, you can come home." Pausing to take a deep breath he continued.

"I'm sorry Dudley, but it doesn't look like we'll be able to make another go at trying to be family. I uh... I got hurt. Badly. And uh... well, I REALLY don't have much longer left. A day. Maybe two. Tops. I'm getting worse every hour, I can FEEL it. And... there's nothing much the He-Doctors can do. So. I just wanted to say my goodbyes while I could. So, thanks, thank you for trying in the end. It... it meant a lot. Surprisingly. I was actually looking forward to trying again clean. But it seems like... That won't be possible. I set a little bit of money aside at the bank, my bank, just in case any of your children, or grandchildren, or even their grandchildren, ever come to my school. Hopefully things will be better for them there than me once they've finished rebuilding it."

Closing his eyes for a bit Harry fiddled with the phone cord. He had more to say, so much more but he didn't exactly have a lot of time for it. An answering machine could only record so much before it ran out of memory. "Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, we've never gotten along. I think mutual loathing would be the proper term for it but... thank you for taking me under your roof. You at least managed to give me ten years without that murderer chasing me, ten years of being just me, ten years of - I guess, toughening me up. If it hadn't been for that, I might not have lasted this long so... thanks, I guess. I wish things could have worked out between us, properly. I would have liked to call you family, but… I guess those sorts of things are out of reach now." He said the last part mostly to himself, voice trailing off towards the end of the sentence.

Shaking the melancholy mood off of himself he continued on with the last words he'd ever be able to speak to the only family he had left. "Aunt Petunia, I checked Mum's Will, she left you a few pieces of jewellery so, if my friend Hermione drops by, don't worry, she's just giving them to you. She's a lot like mum so please, try to be nice. Her parents went missing and they're still looking for them. Well... I think that's it for me. I should hang up before I use up all of Piers' answer machine memory." he said, leaning a shoulder against the wall as he absently fed coins into the phone just in case he ran out of credit.

"Thank you for letting me say my goodbye Piers." He said finally, straightening up from where he'd started to lean up against the wall, this time speaking to the teenager who was no doubt listening to this on the other end of the phone. "Good luck to you too. I don't know what you've been up to, or what you plan to do, but I hope you manage it. Grow up to be a good man. Not the little shit I grew up with." he finished with a short laugh as he imagined the look on the boy's face at those words. "Oh, and before I forget, Good luck with your Boxing career Dudley. You have a killer right hook. Use it well. I didn't spend all those years helping you practice for nothing... Goodbye."

Harry sagged against the wall when he hung up and fought against the wave of dizziness washed over him as his magic flickered like the last embers of a dying flame. Two days? That had been an overly generous estimate. At the rate his magic was draining away from him… he was left with _hours,_ not days. He… wasn't even going to last long enough to see the sunrise.

Waiting for the worst of the dizziness to subside he slid into the closest seat nearby and propped his elbows up on the bar, taking his glasses off and rubbing a tired hand over his eyes. When he finally lifted his head and slipped his glasses back on he realised he'd sat in a seat right next to someone already seated at the bar but couldn't find the energy to move, he gave the man a silent smile in apology but the man merely shrugged and turned back to his drink, seemingly uncaring that a stranger had popped right into his personal bubble.

"What can I get you?" a voice asked and Harry looked up at the barkeeper.

"Um… I'll have… what he's having." He replied, pointing to the dark haired man sitting at his elbow. The man seemed to be enjoying whatever he was drinking, savouring each sip and drinking in slow, deliberate mouthfuls. The dark haired man sitting next to him snorted and reached his glass forwards to clink against the one the bartender soon had on the bar in front of him.

"Aged scotch. Not a bad choice." The man remarked as he pulled his glass back, a smirk curling up his face.

"… thanks?" Harry blinked, reaching for his glass and drinking down a mouthful.

He regretted it immediately.

Fire burned down his throat. He coughed and spluttered around his hand. Hastily setting his glass down he groped blindly for the wad of napkins the amused looking bartender had left for him, apparently haven foreseen his reaction and prepared for it, and tried to regain his breath. Some of what he'd coughed out had taken the next best escape route when he'd covered his mouth and now even his nasal passages were joining in on feeling like they'd been set on fire!

"You… are a… b-bas… tard." Harry coughed out painfully, eyes watering at the sensation as the man sitting next to him laughed in his face.

"Puppy." The man returned, stealing the drink he'd just abandoned and taking a very pointed sip from it. "Drinks like this are meant to be _savoured_, not knocked back like water." The man smirked again as Harry signaled the barkeeper down for a glass of water and tried to clean himself off and control his breathing.

"S… savour away." Harry wheezed, waving the glass away when the man made as if to offer it back to him to try again. Accepting the glass of water from the barkeeper he drained it completely and handed it back. "I'll try something with a little less… punch."

"Suit yourself." The man said as he pulled the glass back.

"God that was awful." Harry complained as wiped the last traces of alcohol off his face and clothes, mopping up the worst of it. "Why would you even drink something like that?"

"Because I'm not a cultureless brat?" the man replied sarcastically, the smirk on his face growing. "Try picking from the children's menu, their drinks aren't likely to kill you."

Harry plucked the drink back out of the man's hands at that and took a small cautious sip, wincing at the burn but managing to drink the small amount down. "A drink isn't going to kill me when I'm already dying." He said, coughing a bit as he looked the man dead in the eye. "Might as well try it while I still can."

The man stared at him for a long moment and Harry turned away and back to his drink to try another cautious sip. He HAD been looking for something to chase away the cold and he'd certainly found something that fit the bill, he just hadn't expect it to be quite so _potent_. Warmth curled through his system and settled in his stomach, it didn't affect his magic in any way and he could still feel the same drain but now… he wasn't feeling the accompanying cold that he'd been feeling since waking up from getting hit by the Killing Curse.

"… dying?" the man sitting next to him asked quietly, dark eyes raking up and down his body as if looking for confirmation of what he was saying and keeping his voice low enough that the bartender couldn't hear him.

"I'm… sick. Terminal and I don't have very long left." Harry said, staring into the amber liquid in his glass as the words left him. It was the first time he'd acknowledged it, actually said it out loud and doing it felt surprisingly natural. It was coming. He wasn't afraid of it. Sirius, Remus and his parents were waiting for him. Just thinking about it put him closer to peace than he'd been in years. Smiling softly to himself at the thought Harry raised his glass to take another cautious sip of the liquid that had managed to warm him up when numerous doses of Pepper Up had failed… and promptly choked as the man sitting next to him asked his next question.

"… and have you kissed anyone yet?"

Inhaling scotch was infinitely more painful than simply drinking it without being prepared for it and Harry spent a good few minutes spluttering as the man laughed at his reaction.

"I would have asked if you were still a virgin but the answer to that question is painfully clear." The man continued on as if Harry hadn't just choked, smirking down at him as he slumped over the bar wheezing again.

Ok, he was SO not about to fall for that again, he had the guy's measure. He was getting a real kick out of getting a reaction out of him wasn't he? The guy wanted to play that game? Fine then. He'd play along. "Yeah." He said as he mopped himself clean for a second time, determined not to get caught spluttering again. "They weren't that good though. But I'll chalk that up to the first using me for rebound on her dead boyfriend, and the other as my best mate's kid sister."

"Oh? A little sister? How brave of you." The man said, eyes glinting at the unspoken challenge in Harry's eyes, seemingly determined to see him spluttering again.

"… she also had six brothers."

The man snorted. "And no plans to spend your last night with that young lady in question?"

"Not really. I don't think I could do that to her."

"So you'll die a virgin, how sad."

"... smooth. Remind the dying kid what he's going to be missing out. Great stuff. I can see you're all sunshine and gumdrops. Must be real popular with the ladies."

"I could help you with that." The man purred, leaning right up into his personal space, knocking Harry's new fedora off his head.

Catching it before it could hit the ground Harry scooped it up and squashed it onto the man's face, pushing the man back onto the seat he'd leaned out of trying to get him spluttering again. "Nah. You're alright mate. I'll have to pass on that." Harry said as he pushed the hat up onto the man's head. "However would you deal with my corpse in the morning?" he asked sarcastically as the man flipped the fedora off his head and examined it before tilting it back on at a rakish angle.

"I'm sure I could manage, I am the world's greatest hitman after all." The man replied, buffing his nails on his shirt and smirking in good humour.

Harry's froze in mid-sip and choked down it down, staring up at his drinking partner for the night with wide eyes. "You… aren't joking."

"Interesting." The man murmured, leaning back into his seat. "The first person not in the Mafia to ACTUALLY believe me."

Mafia? That… Ok. Sure. Didn't matter. "Couldn't you have waited till after I'd finished swallowing to drop that on me?" Harry asked, rubbing at his throat as he coughed painfully, it felt raw from forcing down his most recent mouthful.

"So you swallow. Even more interesting." The man said, waggling his eyebrows.

"You're going there? Really?" Harry asked even as he felt his face flush a bright red, just the reaction the man had been looking to garner judging by the satisfied Cheshire smirk crawling up his face. Harry had heard more than his fair share of dirty jokes before, you couldn't escape living in Gryffindor tower without hearing a good few, but he'd never actually been the target of them before. No one had ever had the balls to crack dirty jokes about him, at least not to his face.

"I'm not used to being turned down, humour me."

Harry snorted. "Well if it's any consolation, I just don't do one night stands. And since I've only GOT one night - you're getting nothing." There was a moment of silence at that and their eyes met, a silence that stretched before breaking with a laugh that sounded out of the both of them.

"Oh my god." Harry said as he leaned heavily against the bar, wheezing with laughter this time. "If any of my friends saw me right now _they'd_ die. I'm in a bar, drinking and getting hit on by a professional killer."

"Not just a professional killer." the man corrected, ever present smirk angling down at him again. "I'm the World's _Greatest_ Hitman."

Harry palmed his face, not knowing if he wanted laugh or not. What a thing to be proud of. "There's a cop sitting just across the room." He pointed out, keeping a firm lid on the bubble of unreal hilarity that wanted to escape out of him.

His drinking partner set his drink down and slanted his head in the direction Harry had indicated, as if he hadn't even noticed the uniformed officer relaxing at her own table, and turned to give him a look so heavy with condescension that Harry wanted to kick him. It was a look that said 'Really?', 'As if.' and, 'Bitch please.' all at once.

"Someone as high-class as myself will never have to worry over such small things." The man said loftily, sniffing at the very idea of getting arrested.

Wasn't exactly lacking in confidence was he? "And if I went over there and told her that you told me you were a hitman?" Harry asked, biting his lip to stop himself from laughing. This conversation really shouldn't be as funny as he was finding it.

"Well I was just trying to score myself a hot date, wasn't I?" the hitman asked rhetorically, an innocent, butter-wouldn't-melt expression briefly crossing his face. "I had no _idea_ you'd actually _believe_ my little joke~!"

"Unbelievable. So what if I added that I was underage? You could get arrested for trying to 'get lucky' with a minor."

The man smirked viciously, dark eyes bright with hilarity. "You wouldn't be that stupid would you? Why that would be you admitting to underage drinking! To a police officer! You'd spend the last night you have on earth stuck in a jail cell, what a tragic end!"

Harry let out a burst of shocked laughter. How the hell had the bastard managed to turn the hypothetical situation around so fast? This guy was stupidly fast on his mental feet! "I think I might be starting to see how you earned your title…" Harry said when he finally gained control of himself.

The smirk on the man's face shifted from viciously amused to highly satisfied and preening in seconds. The man sketched an elaborate bow at him from where he was sitting and reached up to his own head and doffed the fedora at him. "It's always good to hear appreciation, especially from such a lovely audience."

Harry snorted again. "You never stop do you?"

"It's in my nature." The man said, false tone of apology in his voice. "I'm very… _active_."

"There's an innuendo in there I'm too polite to point out." He shot back, leaning away as the hitman leaned into his personal space again. He reached out a hand to push the man back away from him again when the world abruptly began started to spin. His drinking companion was saying something but Harry didn't hear any of it.

Darkness eclipsed his vision for a brief moment, not long enough to make him fall from his seat to the ground but definitely nearly there. He felt dizzy, the sudden cold rush that crashed through him left black spots dancing in front of his eyes and his head feeling light. The world went dark for a heartbeat and his body just lost the strength to hold him up.

Harry had felt this before.

Sprinting up the stairs to the North Tower and the Divination classroom, finally getting there only for his knees give out on the last few steps, too tired and weak to carry him. Diving from a too-steep height and having the breath rush out of him when he levelled his broom. A lethargy that came with not being able to catch his breath followed by the tingling weakness that came from casting too many spells at once.

When the darkness receded he realized he was hanging sideways halfway out of his chair and a solid arm was the only thing keeping him from meeting with the floor. He realized almost immediately that his black-out must have only been momentary, otherwise his drinking companion wouldn't still be trying to drag him back up onto the seat he'd almost fallen out of.

"I knew you weren't lying but I didn't think you were being so completely honest about your estimated end of the line." The man remarked as he got up out of his own seat to steady him further.

"Did you think I was joking about leaving you with a corpse to deal with in the morning when you offered to 'help' me earlier?" Harry asked faintly as the dark spots in his eyes stared to dance across his vision.

"… I'm taking you to a doctor." Was all the hitman responded with, slipping the arm he had caught him with around his waist and pulling him off the chair.

Harry struggled weakly against the man's grip as he all but manhandled him out of the bar. "I told you, there's nothing they can do. They had me on bed rest before I checked myself out this morning. I want to actually DO something on my last night on earth. Not sit in a bed and listen to my best friends tell me everything will be okay, that I'll be fine and soon we'll be able to move on with our lives and all that sort of bollo…"

Harry's legs weakened mid-word and buckled, they folded out from underneath him as his visioned darkened again. When he next came-to he was no longer being pulled out of the bar but was instead lying in the passenger's seat of a car.

"Should I start trying to climb out the window screaming about abduction?" Harry asked groggily as he peeled his eyes open to glare weakly at his kidnapper.

"I doubt you could muster the strength. Sit down, shut up, and accept my help. I don't usually offer it beyond a bullet." The hitman snorted, dark eyes briefly glancing off the road to slant an irritated glare of his own down at him.

"Sounds lovely. Give me one of those, beats being dragged into a ruddy hospital again." He managed to grit out, finding it hard to breathe all of a sudden.

The next few minutes passed by in a blur of unintelligible noise and movement, he faded in and out of consciousness between one weak breath and the next. One moment he was in the car, then he was being pulled out and set on a wheelchair. He was being wheeled into a hospital and then lifted up onto an bed. The hitman was leaning over him and then a doctor took his place, a strangely young doctor that couldn't be very much older than he was. One that was possibly just year older than he was.

The teenager's brown hair was dishevelled and the white doctor's coat he had thrown on over a pair of light-blue scrubs had seen better days. A stethoscope was hooked around the doctor's neck and he had a badge that read 'Shamal' pinned to them.

"...shouldn't be possible. He's actually hemorrhaging Sky Flames, losing them too quickly for his body to replace. But not active or we'd be able to see it from half a city block away. Where did you find him, Reborn? By all rights he'd be on every radar in the underworld but he's a complete unknown. His organs are in the middle of failing due to massive flame-depletion, he has full-on heart arrhythmia - he's physically having a heart attack because he doesn't have enough energy to keep his heartbeat to a steady rhythm. Even his BRAIN is shutting down! Goddamn. I… I couldn't do anything even if I wanted to! He would need an ocean of Sky Flames just to keep him out of ICU long enough for a ridiculously powerful Sun flame to heal the damage. And I'm talking RIDICULOUSLY strong. Stronger than you."

"How long does he have?"

"Not even an hour. The kid is burnt out, running on fumes. By all rights, he should have died long before you brought him in with the level of flame energy he has. I've seen squirrels with stronger wills to live than him right now. I honestly don't know what to say, Reborn, I've never seen anything like it. It shouldn't even be possible to hemorrhage your Flame like that."

"I shouldn't… have lived this long in the first place." Harry muttered under his breath, tilting his head towards the voices and opening bleary eyes that he hadn't realized he'd shut, focusing his blurring vision on the two men standing at his bedside. "People aren't supposed to survive what I did, I'm on borrowed time anyway, always have been. It's not a big deal, you can stop freaking out… I'm just going to the Next Adventure is all."

"There is no great Adventure. Just death. Are you really so weak willed that you're just going to give up?" The dark haired hitman, (Reborn?) snapped, turning away from the awfully young looking doctor and reaching a hand to grip one of his shoulders in a near-painful grip.

"… And you would know what happens when people die, wouldn't you?" he snorted as he lifted his own hand up to pull the man's hand off his shoulder. "As for giving up, this isn't me giving up. This is me accepting that what will be, will be and I will meet whatever comes afterwards with my head held high. I'm not going to be dragged down kicking and screaming like some ungrateful coward. Death is just another part of life after all, and I will greet him with a smile." Harry smirked bitterly. He'd meet death just like he had the last time. Head on, without choice but with no regrets, without the will or desire to die but accepting the inevitable. This was the Peverell Fate.

A stubborn glint appeared in Reborn's dark eyes and Harry let go of the man's hand when a warmth started to spread down from between their joined hands. "… didn't the doctor just finish saying that you wouldn't be able to help me?" he asked gently as he pushed the hand away from him. "How crazy do you have to be to go so far for a complete stranger?"

Dark eyes widened. "You know what I was…"

"You're warm. Like I used to be. Didn't take much to figure out." Harry smiled wryly as he shifted. "If you want to help… there is still one thing you can do for me." He said as he reached a weak hand into his lapel pocket and tried to get his shaking hand to cooperate long enough to pull the object in his pocket out.

"Here, let me…" Shamal said, easing Harry's hand away from where he was trying to reach and slipping his hand into the pocket. Grasping the ring he had tucked away in there the young doctor yelped when he came into contact with it and hastily pulled his hand back, making the ring tumble out onto the bed-spread.

"Feels horrible doesn't it?" Harry asked as he caught it, wrapping his fingers around it.

"What is that thing?" the teenaged doctor asked, pulling a face and wiping his hand off against his scrubs, examining his hand briefly as his face contorted.

"My curse." He answered. "Toss it into the next volcano you happen to pass?" Harry asked jokingly, pulling the silk handkerchief he had tucked into the breast pocket of his jacket so he could drop the Gaunt Ring into it and tie the folds shut over the awful thing.

He'd already taken care of the Elder Wand, broken it into pieces, pulled its core out before burning it and left his invisibility cloak with the goblins for Teddy to inherit when he was old enough for Hogwarts. The only thing he had yet to take care of was the ring, he'd thought to maybe toss it down a storm drain somewhere or drop it a dumpster. He'd nearly forgotten he still had it until he'd unwittingly reminded himself of it by thinking of his Peverell ancestors. By giving it away to a stranger, someone with no connection to him, no one would be able to find it. Not without retracing the steps he'd taken to get to where he was and then the searching witch or wizard would have to track down Reborn. Who had admitted to being the 'World's Greatest Hitman.' Anyone who came after him looking for the ring would deserve what they got.

"Chop up the ring, grind the stone down to dust, drop it in molten lead or whatever. Just destroy it. I would have done it myself but… well, here I am. In a hospital. Again." Harry said as he sighed gustily. Pushing himself up off the bed he tried to reach out and hand the little silk-wrapped bundle over to Reborn but stopped halfway as he felt the world around him start to swim again.

Reborn caught him as he folded forwards over himself, catching the hand that had tried to hand over the Gaunt ring and gently taking it from his hands. Harry let himself fall over onto the man's shoulder and slumped as the last vestiges of energy slipped from him. "It's… the last… thing I meant to do…" Harry whispered into the man's ear, unable to summon the strength for anything louder. "The number… of people… who died over this thing… I meant… to be the last and let… the Peverell Fate… die with me. Don't let anyone… else… get their hands… on it. Destroy it… as soon as you can."

Warmth blossomed inside him, traveling down from where Reborn had placed his hands to run through his near-frozen system. The hitman was channelling the energy that had been flaring through his hands earlier into him and Harry didn't even have the strength left to stop him anymore.

"No! Reborn! What are you doing? Do you know the consequences of Harmonizing with a dying Sky? That's going to shatter you! You're ruining yourself Reborn! Stop before you go too far!" Shamal exclaimed, reaching forward to try and tug the hitman away from him and getting kicked back roughly to the wall with a pained grunt for his troubles.

"It's a little too late for that." Reborn snarled, hands twitched slightly on him.

Shamal sucked in a shocked breath.

Harry didn't know what they were talking about but in the end it didn't really matter did it? The energy Reborn was feeding into his system wasn't going to last very long, it was just barely enough to give him the strength breathe out a laugh against the man's ear. "So stubborn." He said weakly, reaching up to hook his fingers into the man's breast pocket, too weak to reach up any further. "Thank you… for trying but… my time… is finished. You need… to let me go. Sorry, I guess I'm going… to be leaving… you to deal with that… corpse after all…" Harry whispered softly into the man's neck. "You… didn't even manage to get… anything out of me…"

"… I got your hat. I'm keeping it."

Harry chuckled weakly at that. "Looks better on you… than it ever did… on me."

"… any last requests beyond destroying the ring?" Reborn's voice ground out, sounding strangely rough for such a smooth voice. "That kiss offer is still on the table."

Harry laughed. "Open… the window? I just… wanted to… see the sky… one last time."

Reborn jerked, as if that wasn't exactly something he was willing to let him go long enough for, and Shamal abruptly moved from where he'd been kicked to the wall and over to his bedside instead of the closed and dark window. The doctor reached into a coat pocket, threaded a ring over his finger and a wave of deep blue flames washed over the room. Harry felt them brush over his skin and felt his lips tug upwards at the sensation, the warmth was a very welcome relief against the creeping edges of cold that was beginning to sink back into his bones despite Reborn's best efforts.

The indigo flames flooded across the floors and edged up the walls to eclipse the ceiling, they blurred the hospital away and replaced it with a stunning expanse of wide open sky, a gorgeous sunset. Shamal had somehow managed to create a misted sky inside the room, one that burned brightly with a sun colouring the clouds in various shimmering shades of vivid gold and orange. An artificial wind brushed the hair back away from his face and, if Harry allowed himself, he could almost imagine that he flying in the air above Hogwarts, viewing a peaceful sunset after a tiring day of classes. He could even halfway ignore the chill threading back through him as he imagined the warmth of the flames tickling his skin were from the hearth of fireplace in Gryffindor Tower.

For that one blissful moment, he was home. In the only home he'd ever known and somehow safer than he'd ever felt in his entire life. How was it that a professional killer, a hitman and his friend, made him feel this way? Not even the warmest of Mrs Weasley's hugs had ever left him feeling so…

"… warm." He whispered, leaning into the hold that was the only thing keeping upright. He felt his breath begin to slow and smiled as his vision began to blur into grey around the edges. He felt his hand slip out of the hitman's breast pocket, no longer having the energy to keep them hooked there and forced out his last words even as he felt the last vestiges of strength leave him.

"Thank… you."

OoO

Reborn marked that day as the beginning of the end of the 'golden age' in his life. It certainly marked the day his luck took a turn for the worse, or perhaps that was merely a reflection on state of his mind, that he would mistake his shattered thought processes and blame his failures on 'luck'.

For a long time he stopped caring which jobs he took or who they came from. Missions stopped being challenges and became pay-checks. He threw himself into his work with the kind of hard-boiled attitude Shamal called 'self-destructive' to his face. He didn't care. It wasn't like he had anything to worry about. He was the world's greatest hitman, any surprises weren't exactly going to hit him any harder than he'd already been hit. Though if Shamal said he was being self-destructive one more time he was going to self-destruct his fucking foot up his herniated ass.

He was back in Italy now, after months spent in England. He was working. Finally after weeks of burying himself in research, combing record after record and strong arming Shamal into calling hospitals looking for information on the 'John Doe' that had been 'admitted' into the hospital and finding nothing.

Reborn had spent those months in England in the grips of a blind obsession.

Retracing the teenager's last moments had been surprisingly difficult and combing through the streets for any clue as to where the mysterious Sky had come from only dug up the store the boy had apparently bought the clothes he'd been wearing when he died. He'd had even paid for the new clothes with cash. Reborn had chased down the dead end that had been the shop-keeper's belief that the boy had lost his luggage at the airport and collected the articles of clothing the boy had left at the shop but had turned up empty handed as far as a name went.

All he had to show for that arm of the investigation was set of white pajamas and a thick hand-made cloak made of heavy wool, clothing that had ended up being yet another gigantic dead end as they had been hand-made instead of store-bought. He hadn't even been able to locate the tailor who had made the cloak despite having visited more than a fair few specialty stores and insinuating himself into England's community of _Renaissance_ fair goers to comb through their entire network of contacts.

CCTV footage was yet another dead end, Reborn managed to track the young Sky's last moments, from their meeting in the bar to the purchase of the clothes he'd been wearing but tracing his steps further into London proved to be an exercise in frustration. The teenager had walked to the clothing store out of an area almost completely devoid of cameras.

"It's like he appeared out of thin air!" Shamal had complained as he hung up the phone in the hotel room Reborn had been using as a base of operations. "I must have called every hospital in England by now and no one has got any matches for the kid! The kid was only seventeen and he looked like he'd been through the wringer, he had to have visited a hospital at SOME point in his life!"

The only other clue they'd had on them as to the teenager's identity was the ring he had told them to destroy, the symbol engraved on the stone and the name Peverell. The internet didn't reveal anything about the symbol on the ring on its own but paired with the name the boy had unwittingly dropped they came across what seemed to be an entire online community, one that was wholly dedicated an urban myth unique to England. It was based an old children's story that had apparently been passed down from parent to child in England for the last few thousands of years and spoke of three objects that supposedly granted the person who collected all three immortality.

The three items were a 'wand', an 'invisibility cloak' and… a stone engraved with the symbol of 'the master of death.' A stone that was able the summon the dead, but such a pale imitation of them that they weren't even ghosts. Goddamn it, he'd finally met the one Sky strong enough to pull him into a Harmony and of course the boy was going to be tangled up in something that had painted a gigantic target over himself.

He'd been TEMPTED to find out if the ring was genuine, if it worked as advertised but had ultimately not wanted to drag the poor boy's soul out of whatever afterlife he'd be enjoying just to be forced to hang around him. Because after all the shit he'd clearly been through, he would be in the good place. Not the very hot one that awaited him.

How could someone have been so calm about their own death? Especially when their flame was all but dragging people into his orbit? God, Reborn had practically walked face-first into that and hadn't had a hope in hell at being able to avoid it. He'd noticed the boy as soon as he'd walked in, even overheard snatches of the phone call the boy had made prior to sitting down despite the music obscuring most of the conversation, (The name Piers must have been a first name, damn it). He'd not only been lecherous but when he let his guard down just enough to feel for the kid… he'd Harmonized with him without even a second's worth of warning. Forged a Guardian bond with a dying Sky. Just barely after the boy walked into the same bar as him and he'd bonded with a full Harmonization singing in the back of his head! A bond that strong usually took months, (sometimes years!), to form!

He had gotten to know what it was like, just for that moment, to be accepted wholesale and completely. Had experienced a Harmony. Spent an hour chatting and laughing with the most important person in his life, had finally found a Sky powerful enough to draw him in. One who hadn't cared about his title as the Greatest Hitman, hadn't cared about the lives he had stolen, the power he had hidden away, or the prestige that his presence would bring. One who didn't even know about Flames, or care. A Sky that had laughed and shoved a hat in his face while blushing to the tips of his ears over a little harmless flirting, and had choked on scotch he didn't like the taste of just to scrape what little teenage dignity he had left.

Reborn had heard all the stories, had multiple recounts of what Harmonizing felt like, who hadn't? But the realization he had Harmonized felt like every story he'd ever heard put together and more. It had been a feeling so unlike anything else. It had been like... coming home. As if his whole world was suddenly grounded and opened, almost as if there was suddenly a center to his universe and everything that he was, could be, had been, was being welcomed by it, embraced and pulled close without judgement, fear or expectation.

The loss of that was… unspeakable.

Shamal hadn't exactly escaped unscathed but he'd been lucky enough to avoid a full Harmonization, the doctor hadn't had the time yet to acknowledge what had started to happen and the boy clearly hadn't known about it but it had been there. It had been more of a whisper with him though, a brushing of hands rather than the full clinging grasp that had ripped right through his own barriers like they wasn't even there.

Reborn wanted to be jealous of Shamal, of the man's near-escape, but FUCK that had been his Sky. He was angry at himself for being so useless, angry at Shamal for not being as affected by the boy's death and then angry at himself all over again for even thinking Shamal had been the lucky one. Angry that Shamal had suggested that perhaps they should let things be and that surely the kid wouldn't have wanted him to drown in his death. Angry that Shamal had been right because the kid hadn't seemed the type and then at himself over the fact he'd dragged Shamal into the kid's orbit.

It had near ruined the teenager.

Shamal had put a hold on his studies. The Doctorate in Infectious Diseases, his Nursing and Entomology degrees on hold to dive.. no, _FALL_ into his own research. Trying to find a cure he'd likely never use. For a condition neither he nor any of his contacts had ever heard about, a condition he'd never likely come across again and one that he couldn't even begin to fathom the cause of. Working only with the information he'd managed to glean from that brief time Reborn had brought him in to treat him because there was no way the hitman was going to allow an autopsy on the dead Sky's corpse. Shamal had known better than to ask for permission. The doctor hadn't been anywhere near close to considering suicide. He hadn't been that badly burned by his unintentional Harmony. Not like Reborn had been.

Months later and the teenager was still nowhere near to finding a cure, just like he was nowhere closer to finding any trace of evidence that the kid had ever lived aside from the nameless grave in Italy where he was laid to rest near a beachfront, a location famous for its stunning sunsets. Buried where people would respect the symbol on his gravestone, a winged crown. A nod to the only thing he'd ever known him as. His Sky.

The grave quickly became a local legend - the Unnamed Sky. Rumours soared, and people gossiped on the atypical representation engraved on the tombstone. Traditionally, Skies were represented with a bold crown and flared wings. A crown to symbolize their position and wings that represented their flames, flared to protect what was theirs, in their rightful place, neither falling nor flying.

Reborn had chosen something different for his Sky. The meaning behind the symbol's break from the traditional bold crown and flared wings to the small, understated crown with the curled in wings was simple. His Sky had ended up having to defend himself, shield himself, and ultimately had to go up to the good place in the actual sky. So, wings were folded inwards, poised ready for protection and prepared for flight at a moment's notice. Crown small and understated for his Sky's unrealized potential.

Shamal had understood the meaning immediately, everyone else? Weren't nearly so quick on the uptake. Some thought that Reborn had been hiding a Sky and congratulated themselves over coming up with a reason as to why he'd never Harmonized with a Sky before. Others assumed correctly that theirs had been a recent meeting, but then went on to speculate over what qualities a Sky would have to have to be able to Pull Reborn into 'her' Harmony.

He looked forward to the idiot brave enough to ask him questions, 'Answering' would make for fantastic stress relief.

Rubbing an irritated hand between his eyes Reborn sighed and carefully, with growing ease of practice, pushed the mental image aside. He… needed to stop obsessing already. Nothing was going to change what had happened and dwelling was just going to drag him back down into the spiral of depression he had only just managed to drag himself back up out of. He wasn't all the way there yet, probably wouldn't ever be but at the very least he could function.

Should he take a break? Take himself on vacation somewhere sunny? All that time in dreary England and then diving back into the Underworld immediately upon his return to Italy had left him with very little time to unwind. He needed some time to relax.

Letting himself into his office Reborn closed the door behind him and walked over to is desk, dropping his keys in the ashtray he kept on-hand for clients. Taking the time to greet his newly hatched pet chameleon, a gift from Shamal that had clearly been meant to have been something of a distraction, Reborn carefully shifted the potted plant the reptile was clinging to. He made sure it was as far away from the edge of the desk as possible and let a rare smile cross his face when the creature leaned forward to press up against his hand.

Leon the Chameleon, named so for the express purpose of seeing the Doctor slap a hand to his own face in exasperation, had turned out to be quite the priceless gift. A shape-shifter. One that had been handed to him as an egg and given to him to 'fuss over' as Shamal had put it. A shape-shifter was rare. Finding a shape-shifter's egg was rarer. Even rarer was the chance to have such an egg respond to the owner and hatch. Rarer still was the opportunity for said shape-shifter to imprint on said owner.

Giving Leon the petting he was clearly looking for Reborn reached a hand into the shallow dish of pins he kept next to Leon's plant and turned to press it into the picture he'd been given of his latest target, pinning the man's image in between the eyes. Leaning back he stared wordlessly at his photo-covered wall and considered. He… really had been working himself down to a thread hadn't he? Maybe… it was time to consider retiring-

Feeling the hair on the back of his neck rise Reborn had a gun in hand and leveled directly behind him within an instant. "Who's there?" He demanded, scanning the apartment for the intruder that had his hair standing on end. He'd heard something. In his apartment. Somewhere that should have been completely safe, how had he not noticed someone had gotten in before him? Now that he was paying attention he noticed the throw rug in the hall had moved a millimetre to the left, the door to his filing room was open and, of course, someone was lounging in the armchair he kept in that room. Waiting in the shadows. For him. Making himself at home in his own chair.

How bold. The action itself spoke volumes as to the skill level and fearlessness this person had, to be confronting him in such a manner. To think he was so tired and stressed that he'd MISSED the tiny and minute details that gave away the fact that someone had gotten into his apartment before him… he would have noticed had he not been so overworked. It seemed he was LONG overdue for that vacation.

"Please excuse me, Mr World's Greatest Assassin." The intruder said calmly, tilting his head and observing him. The movement shifted his upper body into view as the man had been sitting just so that the light coming in from the room Reborn was standing in illuminated only his lower body. "So, you really are qualified."

Quite the dramatic soul wasn't he? How long had the man been sitting in his apartment thinking of ways to introduce himself? Going from what he'd seen of the man so far he wasn't impressed. The only reason why this man had gotten the drop on him was simply because he had let it happen, worn himself down enough to the point that apparently his apartment was deemed safe enough to break into. Qualified?

Keeping the sneer off his face Reborn made sure his face stayed passive. Easily impressed as well, wasn't he? To be so admiring of what he himself viewed as a mistake that could have cost him his life. This either had to be another hitman or… a suicidal client. Well then, best get straight to the point. "Who are you? Who sent you?" He asked, keeping his questions short. He was tired and he'd already had enough of this man's bullshit from first appearance.

His intruder had a taste for checker-patterned clothing. Tie, gloves, hat, mask and even part of his great coat was patterned with the same blocky black and white print. How tasteless. "I came on my own." The man returned lightly, one of his hands releasing its grip on an overly gaudy cane to reach into a lapel pocket.

"Don't move an inch." Reborn warned, tensing up. One wrong move and the man was going _earn_ his death wish.

"Just calm down a moment." The man said, hands closing around something smaller than the gun Reborn thought he'd been reaching for. He didn't relax, any number of things could be small enough to—a clear pacifier?! Eyes unintentionally tracked the object's movement as the man tossed it in a high loop above his own head. Shifting momentarily off of his mental target Reborn was caught flat-footed by the sheer absurdity of the man pulling such an object. On him. A hitman he had just acknowledged as the best in the world.

"I am… collecting the world's strongest, I Prescelti Sette." The man smirked, obviously feeling much more comfortable now that Reborn had shifted his piercing gaze off of him for that brief moment. A cocky smirk was now stretching across the man's mouth, visible under the half mask he was wearing.

Client. Couldn't be anything else. When had he fallen so far that lunatics thought that coming to him was a safe thing to do?

"I Prescelti Sette?" He asked, curious as to what this particular crazy was asking of him. Might as well hear the man out. Damn his curiosity.

"Yes."

"Is this a commission for work?" he questioned, because was this really the best way the man could think of to go about asking a wired hitman if he wanted to take on a job? Reborn kept his gun steadily pointed at the intruder, this wouldn't exactly have been the first time another hitman had posed as a client in order to 'knock him off his throne', so to speak. "As a team?". The man HAD said he was collecting the world's strongest, what other conclusion could you draw from that?

"You will be well-compensated. First I want you all to join up." The man agreed, unfolding a piece of paper he must have pulled out of his lapel pocket at the same time as the pacifier. Shit, he really wasn't at the top of his game today was he? "Go here." The man instructed, smoothing the small slip of paper on the coffee table next to him as he rose to leave, wisely choosing not to try and hand it over. "Meet up with your colleagues."

He kept his gun trained on the man's head as he left and didn't relax or reach for the piece of paper he'd left behind until he was well and truly sure he was gone. It was a simple map with directions to the apparent meeting place.

Reborn considered it for a long, drawn-out moment. If he'd be working with a team, a team to match him as the 'World's Greatest' then this job could be an easy one. If the team members selected pulled their own weight… it could be just the thing to ease him away from hits and into retirement.

What the hell, one last client as the World's Greatest Hitman. What could it hurt?

OoO

**Chapter End~! Fucking hell that was a wringer of a chapter! As always a big shout-out to Araceil for helping me, practically writing half the chapter and for letting me bounce ideas off of her. **


	2. Chapter 2

Dusk to Dawn

Chapter 2

Sawada Tsunayoshi was a bright baby. He explored the world with a fascination and intelligence that had his parents cooing and thrilled, he was quieter than most children but that only added to his 'charm', it was even thought of as a blessing by his parents. If they noticed the uncertain quality in the way he reacted to the world around him and the wary caution he treated everyone and everything he was unfamiliar with, they just chalked it up to shyness and left it at that.

He loved bright, warm colours, the brighter and warmer the better. He quickly learned to crawl around and was even quicker in learning how to walk and was soon carefully exploring everything he could reach. Clever little hands learned how to push open doors and cupboards, pick up odds and ends to examine and put back. Objects were brought over to the closest parent and then put back once identified.

The words 'Mama' and 'Papa' were very quickly followed by colours, everyday house-hold objects and picture-book animals. He didn't babble like a regular baby did but instead picked up words at a rapid-fire pace that had both his parents beaming with pride. By the time he was wobbling around on unsteady legs he could string together a semi-intelligent sentence and have short, rather broken, conversations with his parents.

Actively avoiding attention Tsuna was content to sticking to either of parent, gluing himself to his father's side and then to his mother's when he wasn't home. However it wasn't very long before Tsuna figured out that no matter how much he may have liked to avoid attention he somehow drew it, with irritatingly effortless ease no matter how hard he tried to keep out of sight. For a brief time he thought it was the colour of his hair, Papa got the same considering looks for HIS blond hair after all.

By the time he was four years old Tsuna knew he was just _different_ from everyone else, there was always something that kept him separate from everyone around him and it wasn't anything as simple as the colour of his hair or his supposedly foreign looks. It was in his dreams, the murky and dark dreams he'd been having for as long as he could remember. It was in the way he felt awkward, both with his family and with the world around him. Something was different about him and he didn't fit in with everyone and everything else the way he was supposed to.

He wished it was something clear-cut and dry, something he could pin down and name. His father called it 'intelligence' and his mother just called him cute but even then there was a sharp and distinct contrast between himself and his peers, in the way they thought and acted that had nothing to do with his personality or looks. The children he encountered and interacted with, neighbours and classmates, seemed almost alien to him.

Then there was the way the world around him felt familiar and unfamiliar all at once. By the time he hit five years old he knew he shouldn't know a good half of the things he knew, all it took was the look on the teacher's face when she had caught him reading through a book she had left on her desk to know that. He knew _now_ that the book he'd picked up had been in English and that he somehow knew that language better than the one he was _supposed_ to know even though he hadn't ever picked up a book in English in his life.

He knew how to read, write and speak in the language. Spoke it in a lilting accent that was completely different from Japanese and at times even _thought_ in the language. It was easy, effortless and… unnatural. At a time when his classmates were still trying to figure out the names of the colours they were using to draw their pictures Tsuna not only knew the colours but could name the different shades and could even spell them correctly. In English. Matching the names in Japanese was a bit of a challenge but again it wasn't exactly difficult. By now it was more than obvious that his dreams were giving him real-world skills.

Tsuna knew better than to tell anyone any of this though, the look on that first teacher's face had been warning enough. He didn't know where he'd seen that look before but he knew what it meant.

Tsu-kun was NOT a freak.

He didn't know what had possessed him to do it but he was glad he had listened to that little thrill of warning inside him that had told him to lie to her when she had asked him what he was doing. He didn't know how he had known but the release of tension out of the woman's shoulders and the relieved smile on her face when he told her he was 'looking for the pictures' gave him everything he needed to know about how she would have taken the news that he could read the book she had left on the table.

He needed to be careful. He needed to keep his head down. If he stuck out or stepped out of the crowd in any way he'd draw attention. Attention drew trouble and that would make his parents angry. He didn't want his parents angry at him! What if they sent Tsu-kun away? He didn't want to go! He wanted to stay with mama and papa! As different as they were from him Tsuna _loved_ his parents. Loved his mother's smiles and laugh. Loved the warmth of his father's hugs and his sound of rumbling voice. Papa even felt warm like Tsu-kun did! It wasn't freakish! They were a normal, happy family.

If all Tsu-kun had to do was pretend to be like his classmates, well that was easy! He was happy to act like them if he could keep Mama and Papa! As long as he didn't do anything stupid he could keep them! Normal, he just had to be normal! It didn't matter if the other kids started laughing at him when he 'lagged' behind everyone in sports and 'forgot' the answers to questions. He was normal, was going to stay normal. He was staying with mama and papa!

Even if it did mean having to dodge bullies at school, on the way there and on the way back. It wasn't as if it wasn't anything he wasn't used to, this was one of the things that second nature to him. He didn't even have to think about what he had to do, he just knew. Duck behind objects. Climb walls and trees. Hide if and when you could. Loudly approach an adult, a police officer was best, and only run when there was no other option because running made everything that much more fun for the kids chasing you. If you had to run, drop something for them to get distracted by and use the time to get away.

Tsuna's distraction today was the pink inflatable ball his mother had gotten from him for his last birthday and he honestly wouldn't care very much if he lost it. He hated the colour and the way it brought toads to mind. He'd kept the ball flattened in his backpack during the day and used a hand pump to refill it with air when class let out and bounced it on the way home. Just because he was planning on using it as a distraction didn't mean he wasn't going to get _some_ fun out of it.

He sighed as he left the school grounds, wondering exactly what it was about himself that the bullies were so drawn by. It wasn't like he was the only kid there with foreign looks and he was far from the only blond. There was a girl in the next class whose hair was a shade or two darker than his but HER hair was still blond. It wasn't fair, he hadn't asked to inherit his father's hair colour! If only he'd gotten his mother's hair to go with the eyes he'd inherited from her… one day he was going to dye his hair and no one was going to stop him!

Tsuna cautiously made his way home, keeping a weather eye out for potential bullies as he kicked the irritatingly pink ball home. Why couldn't Mama have gotten him a proper coloured ball? He'd have liked a nice yellow one maybe, or a bright red one. He would still play with it, he wasn't ungrateful but… it was _pink_. Did Mama want him to be a girl?

Wrinkling his nose at the idea Tsuna kicked the ball harder than he should have around the last corner to his house, making it bounce off the footpath and onto the road. Oh well, it wasn't as if he was going to miss it if it got run over. He hoped it _did_ get run over, maybe his mother would get him a new one if he asked nicely. Peering around the corner of the wall he looked around and sighed in disappointment, it hadn't gotten run over. It had rolled to a stop just in front of a parked car. Maybe he should wait till it DID get run over?

"Tsu-ku? What are you doing? Hurry up and come home, we have to go somewhere now!" his mother called from the gate of their house, watching him in bemusement with a hand propped up on her hip. "We're going to be picking up Papa's boss from the airport!"

"Airport?" Tsuna questioned, obediently trotting forwards and 'conveniently' forgetting the ball. He knew what that meant, someone was visiting from overseas.

"That's right Tsuna! We're going to meet Papa's boss for the first time! Isn't that exciting? A real Italian gentleman~!" his father exclaimed as he scooped him up from the ground, easily lifting him up and into his arms. "Want to meet him?"

Tsuna nodded hesitantly at that, letting his father take his backpack away from him and pass it onto Mama, biting his lip to stop himself from pouting when he realized the man was headed to the car. He was going to be put in the baby seat. Again.

The pout he was fighting won its bid for freedom when his father, after buckling him into the seat, left for a brief moment and returned with the pink ball Tsuna had left out on the street. The man dropped the evil thing onto his lap, ruffled his hair and went to seat himself in the driver's seat. He'd been hoping it would be flattened by the time he returned. How did Papa keep finding the stupid thing anyway? Tsuna was forever leaving it different places and he always kept returning it!

Did Papa think Tsu-kun liked the ball?

Tsuna let it drop out of his lap as soon as he knew Papa was no longer paying attention and stared longingly at the window, wishing he could reach the button that would make it roll down so he could toss the stupid thing outside. Too bad he couldn't reach it, even with his feet, it was just too far away. Maybe once they reached the airport he'd be able to find somewhere to drop it where his Papa couldn't give it back.

Papa's boss turned out to be an elderly man with a shock of messy hair turned white with age and brown eyes. He was dressed as if on holiday, wearing a straw hat that sat snugly on his head, a blue shirt printed with white flower patterns and a pair of white pants and sandals. Outwardly he looked harmless but Tsu-kun felt something when the man got down on a knee to speak with him and it wasn't anywhere near normal.

The man was warm, Like Papa and Tsu-kun, and looking into his eyes had made him feel like he'd met someone like this before. Those eyes may have been brown but Tsuna saw twinkling blue and a white beard, colourful robes instead of the holiday gear the man was wearing and the hand reaching out to him was offering lemon drops instead of fluffing up his hair.

"Nice to meet you, Tsunayoshi-kun."

Offering the man a shaky smile Tsuna flattened himself to his mother's leg, nowhere near willing to get any closer to the man than he absolutely had to be. The man, 'call me grandpa' had thankfully been sat in the front seat of the car on the way home, his mother had given up the front seat to sit next to him. It gave Tsuna plenty of time to study the back of the old man's head without being seen and wonder about the heat that wafted off him in waves.

He was like Papa and Tsu-kun. Warm. He'd never met anyone who felt the same way they did, not even Mama felt like that. Sticking close to her when they got home gave him the excuse to keep an eye on the strange man without making it obvious that he was doing so, fetching things his Mama needed as she started cooking up a storm. Papa wasn't letting him hover though and brought out the ball Tsuna had squashed under a car seat when everyone had gotten out.

"Here you go Tsuna~! Stop bothering Mama and go play, food will be ready soon!"

Obediently accepting the ball Tsuna sulkily stepped out into the garden and made a show of kicking the ball around, keeping one eye on the living room where Papa was talking with the man who had called himself his grandfather. One wrong kick and the ball, being of the extra-resilient and extremely bouncy type, hit the tree and bounced off the house before it went flying over the fence.

Whoops. Oh well it wasn't as if he really liked the ball in the first place-

Tsuna stepped back, startled for a moment when the ball sailed back over the fence before he could finish the thought and absently caught it before it could bounce past him. Someone had thrown it back? Tossing the ball back over the wall Tsuna quickly ran over to the gate to see if anyone threw it back and watched silently as a man in a dark suit grinned, bent down to pick it up and toss it back over the fence again.

"Ganache stop playing around, we're supposed to be guarding." Another man admonished him, lightly smacking the back of the man's head, messing up his hair. The man had black hair on the back half of his head and blonde hair in the front and an easy-going grin stretched across his face at the scolding.

"I can't help it! He's too cute!"

Guarding? Bodyguards? For who? … for Papa's boss?

"Well look where your stupid playing got the kid, his ball is stuck in the tree!"

What? Really? Tsuna looked up and sure enough, the bright pink ball was now caught in the fork of the branches above his head, looking garish against the lovely green leaves and blue sky.

"Well it's not like I can't just go in there and get it down…"

"That defeats the purpose of being _discreet_, besides you might scare him! Iemitsu would skin you alive for it."

Tsuna wrinkled his nose, he didn't want anyone getting into trouble because of him! It was his fault the ball was in the tree in the first place, he'd be the one to get the ball down! It wasn't that high up and he'd been climbing up and down that tree for ages now, it wasn't like the ball couldn't be reached! The men continued to talk, arguing the merits of retrieving the ball for him versus leaving it there to fall down on its own and then veering off on a tangent he couldn't really follow. Tsuna concentrated on the tree.

"…the way a baby Sky _should_ be, all fluffy and sweet, not a prickly ball of pent up rage!"

"… not so much a baby as a tween though, there is a difference and that difference is _hormones_."

"… really imagine that little ball of fluff turning into a rage-monster?"

"… always the quiet ones."

Ignoring the conversation Tsuna started to climb, nimbly reaching the branch the ball was trapped in and easily balancing along the length in order to reach it. He'd almost reached the stupid thing when a shocked yelp sounded from the other side of the fence, coming from the man who had tossed his ball back earlier. The man's face, now visible from where he was perched on the branch, went ashen and rapidly paled to white.

"What are you doing! Get down from there!"

Tsuna startled, which he really shouldn't have given that he'd seen the man out of the corner of his eye and had known the man was there, but the warning had come so sharply! As a result of his little scare his hand slipped from where he'd been planning to set it down and he overbalanced.

The next few seconds were a blur, he was in the tree and then suddenly he wasn't. He was falling backwards head-first and then suddenly he was… floating? Orange fire streamed out of his outstretched hands, making it easier than anything to flip himself around mid-air and reorient himself so his feet were facing downwards. He landed softly and unharmed on the grass, hands still burning with orange and surrounded with a delicious heat that thrummed through his veins.

Instinctively stepping out of the way of the branch that came down after him Tsuna ducked out of its way without looking and ignored the ball that bounced after it. A glance up and he saw that the branch he'd been on, also the branch that had caught his ball, had broken off the tree. He turned his attention back to the heat in his hands, the play of fire in practically every shade of orange in existence, the warm lick of heat running through his system and marvelled at it. At the warm, intoxicating heat that flashed with all the fire of an orange opal.

He didn't get to admire it for long, feeling the heat fizzle slowly out of him he yawned widely and sat himself down right where he was standing. Slowly leaning forward over the ball he'd rescued Tsuna wrapped himself around it so he could pillow his suddenly heavy head on it. He didn't know what had just happened or how he'd done it but it had tired him out like nothing else!

"I…Iemitsu… how long has he been able to do that?" a voice asked shakily from the living room.

"… this is the first time I've seen…"

Had he not been quite so suddenly sleepy he would have jumped and started panicking, cringing into his Papa's hold when he picked him up Tsuna buried his face in the man's neck and tried to keep his tears back. He'd done it. Done something unnatural. Was Papa going to send him away now?

"It's too early for him to have this kind of access to his flames." His father's guest murmured.

Tsuna blinked and scrubbed at his face a bit to get rid of the moisture at the edges of his eyes before anyone noticed it. What did that mean? Peeking at the man, his supposed grandfather, he stared as the near-stranger reached a finger forward and jerked back a little in surprise when flames flickered to life at the tip.

Before he could really register what was going on the flames pressed into his forehead and the world abruptly went dark.

OoO

Tsuna immediately felt the difference to the world when he woke up.

Dizzily sitting up in bed he weaved as he tried to get the world to stop spinning. His head felt heavy, his limbs tingled numbly and worst of all the heat in his system felt like it had been… leached out of him. Almost completely.

Shivering he dragged up the blankets that had been loosely pulled up to his chin and wrapped it around his frighteningly cold body. He was cold, close to shivering and he really shouldn't be. It was summer, almost the height of it and it was late in the afternoon so he really shouldn't be as cold as he was feeling right now. What had _happened? _He'd been fine earlier and then… suddenly he colder than he'd been in his entire life. Even at this time of night the air should be muggy with heat, instead… he felt like he might as well be standing in a freezer.

Forcing himself out of bed Tsuna dragged the blanket over to the closet, grabbed a thick sweater out and pulled it on. He rubbed some warmth into his arms and ventured out of the safety of his blankets, pausing only to reach into his closet to grab another sweater. Might as well double up if he was feeling this cold.

Padding uneasily out of his bedroom he felt a trickle of uncertainty, the house was quiet. Very quiet. With both parents and a guest in residence it really shouldn't be this silent.

Tsuna checked the other rooms on the first floor before staggering down the stairs, somehow managing to negotiate them without falling over even with the way the world swum in dizzying circles around him.

He wasn't sick. He knew he wasn't and yet… he was having trouble putting one foot in front of the other. If he hadn't been clutching onto the handrail he'd have fallen ass over teakettle and probably broken his neck! As it was he tripped on the last step down anyway and managed to plant his face into the wall. Pushing himself off the wall he took a moment to check if his nose was still intact and not as broken as it felt and gave it a careful rub as he wobbled weakly into the dining room.

It was empty, as was the kitchen and the rest of the house.

"Papa?" Tsuna called out into the empty house as he tried the dining room again and even stepped out into the front yard. "Mama?" The house was deserted, even the car that his dad had rented was missing. Stepping back into the house he headed back through the rooms again, thinking to check them once more but stopped at the sight of the kitchen table.

There was a small meal laid across the table, some rice balls and a bowl of miso soup, along with a simple letter that told him his mother had left to go drop his father off at the airport. He'd been left house all by himself.

He'd never felt so alone.

OoO

In the time that followed his 'grandfather's' visit Tsuna felt like the world had suddenly been tilted on its side and someone forgot to mention it to him. He had trouble walking, he couldn't put one foot in front of the other without tripping over one or both of his feet and his head felt muzzy and full of wool. If he'd had a sore throat to go with the other symptoms he'd have thought he was sick and hunkered down to wait for the illness to pass but several days after the visit went by and the cold, vertigo and dizziness stayed with him.

It didn't take him very long to figure out what was wrong with him. Tsuna had been dreaming of being someone else practically his whole life and these dreams were very much the key to the mystery as to why he suddenly felt like his world had suddenly been turned on its head.

Because those orange flames… the way he'd slowed his own fall down, the fire his father's guest had created at the tip of his finger. Wasn't that… magic?

If the dreams he'd been having his entire life had even the slightest possibility of being something _more_ than just dreams… then he knew what was causing this 'illness'. Hopefully the cold would taper off. The bouts of dizziness would also stop as soon as he managed to get rid of the thing keeping a firm grip on him (his Magic? Flames?). If what he knew from his dreams was real then… his 'grandfather' had sealed away his magic and that was what was making the world feel so topsy-turvy.

The man had done something to him that had leeched the heat right out from inside him and locked it down so hard and so tight that Tsuna almost couldn't feel it anymore. The warmth he had once associated with himself, his father and a few random others had all but evaporated. He was always cold now, it didn't matter what time of the day or year it was or how close or far he was from a source of heat. It was wrong and he didn't like it at all.

He didn't know why the man had done it, but he had an inkling of an idea. Accidental magic was dangerous and, if he was right, the way it had manifested was doubly so! Especially for a five year old. The man had been protecting him from himself.

He didn't like it but… he could live with it.

That small, niggling and hopeful idea that he possibly knew exactly what was going on here was the only thing that kept him from giving up on finding a way to make the world right again. That all he had to do was wait just that little bit longer and he'd no longer have to worry about the cold and the dizziness. Just wait till he was eleven years old because he _remembered_ how this all started.

Magic was real. It was real and magic school was six years away. If it was so dangerous for him to use his magic at this age… Then he could wait.

Six years was nothing when he had a lifetime of magic to look forward to.

OoO

After about a week of staying at home waiting for his 'cold' to pass and a trip to the doctor had Tsuna pronounced healthy enough to return to school. The idiot act he'd been keeping up… stopped being very much of an act and cemented itself as his new reality within what felt like an hour.

His attention wandered during class. He couldn't run three meters without tripping over his feet. He dropped anything and everything he happened to be holding. He made a mess of his lunch trying to eat it and hadn't even managed to keep most what he'd gotten in down, the vertigo sending him weaving drunkenly for the bathroom almost directly after he'd eaten.

He was sure he'd eventually get used to it but how was he going to survive the next few years until he was eleven without accidentally killing himself? He'd already gone through his meagre pocket money tending to various bumps, bruises and scratches he'd collected throughout the week and was hesitant to ask for more. At this rate he'd run out of Band-Aids and disinfectant within the next few days.

He'd tripped down stairs, he'd tripped UP stairs and bounced down them on his ass. He'd skidded across dirt and tumbled over grass without intending to and tripped over thin air for good measure. It was easy to hit the bottom rung of the class, almost embarrassingly easy. The teachers certainly didn't notice the difference in him, either that or they didn't care, and his 'health problems' kept him from having to participate in anything even remote classified as 'sports'.

It was possibly the only good thing about going back to school so early as he now had all the stamina and athleticism of an arthritic, salt-sprinkled slug. He hoped this was the last side-effect he was going to discover of the seal his 'grandpa' had put on him, he didn't need any more 'salt' rubbed into the 'wound'.

As it was he'd already had enough to deal with, the teachers may not have noticed much of a change in him… but the school bullies had. Which in turn had Tsuna adopting methods he'd previously only used in his dreams just to keep away from them. He had 'hideouts' all over Namimori and wasn't exactly afraid of losing non-existent dignity by acting like the baby he looked like. Calling attention to any confrontations on the days when he was feeling particularly drained and couldn't even muster the energy to fight back was about the only way he could get away on those days.

He finally got around to dying his hair using temporary spray to test the results. His mother didn't even notice, not noticing her son's blond hair turning brown overnight came part-and-parcel with the way she floated through life. His dad had once called it 'romantic', Tsuna himself had another word for it. Air-headed. It was a term far more polite than the _first_ description that popped into his head. He'd honestly started to wonder if she'd been dropped on her head as a baby, too bad he couldn't find a polite way to ask her about it.

Dying his hair brown didn't seem to stop him from being the first target of Namimori Elementary bullies, but it DID somehow make him harder to pick out of a crowd. Idiotically enough the switch between colours confused his pursuers. All he had to do to lose them was duck into a bathroom, wash out the colour, switch his clothes around a little and walk away. The downside of that was having to walk home with wet hair, especially when he was already so cold, but the payoff was worth it.

He was walking on the way home from school again, hair already halfway to dry, when he discovered a sure-fire way to lift the lid off his 'flames' temporarily. His dream self's 'saving people thing' seemed to have made its way into Tsuna's personality by hitching a ride on the back of his lack of fear towards bullies. He may have been fine with them pushing him around… Ok, maybe not FINE with it but there was no way he was going to watch someone _else_ get hurt when he could do something about it.

If there was one thing in the world he hated more than anything else it was bullies and here were seven of them. Seven bullies against two little kids. One pinned by the 'leader' of the group, and a little girl crying out for her brother, held back by another boy. There was a third grader, (recognizable as one of the loudest kids in school), pinned to the floor in a sloppy submission hold, looking like he was able to break out of the hold but hesitant and unwilling with his younger sister being threatened.

Something happened in that moment, rushing headlong to 'save' a couple of kids he didn't even know. Something that would later give him the key to unlocking the heat sealed away inside him. The grasp he reached out that had, in the last few days, slipped away before he could pry the lid off his flames held, tightened and _yanked_. He was suddenly flooded with _warmth_, delicious enveloping warmth that rippled through him from head to toe.

His 'saving people thing' coupled with his lack of fear and the jeering group of older elementary school kids surrounding two little kids had him rushing right into the thick of things. He didn't think, didn't even pause to try and process the scene in front of him, all he needed to see was that little girl crying and the third grader pinned to the ground and he was moving before he could stop himself. Tossing his backpack into an alleyway to retrieve later Tsuna dove straight into the thick of things.

Because Sasagawa Ryohei, (he was pretty sure that was his name) … was bleeding. This wasn't anything as stupid as school-yard bullying. This was serious, he even looked like he was having trouble seeing through the blood pouring down his face!

The bully holding the little girl was his first target, as much as he wanted to run straight into the thick of things to get to the injured boy Tsuna was too small to really reach him so he kicked at the next best target. Driving a vicious foot into the fork of the leader's legs from behind as hard as he could he shoved the boy away, catching the girl as she fell and pushing her behind him.

"Go get help!" He ordered shortly. "Run! There's a police box in that direction!"

The little girl stared at him incomprehensively and some of the boys milling around started to laugh, the smarter ones having backed away already. "What? A foreigner? Go home or we'll teach you a lesson too and it won't be Japanese!"

Japanese? What was this kid talking about- oh. Had he? He had. Spoken in full English. Damn. "Sorry." Tsuna apologized roughly to the little girl, this time in the right language, as he gave her another push. "Go get help, there's a police box in that direction. I'll buy you some time."

"But there's so many of them, how are you…"

"I'm not going to try and fight them!" He hissed under his breath, keeping his voice low so the group of boys nearby didn't hear them. "Run to the police box as fast as you can, I'm going to try and grab your… brother?" he asked, glaring at the other kids. "I'm going to grab your brother and run. You run too, go head for the police box, we'll meet you at the park ok?" he finished, giving her another little push to get her going. "Go, now!"

"Go Kyoko! Run!" The boy with the bleeding head wound said as he wrestled himself free of the hold pinning him to the ground, now more than willing to help himself up now that his sister was 'safe'. "We will EXTREMELY handle this!"

The girl, Kyoko, listened. With only a slight hesitant stutter to her step she whirled around and ran in the direction Tsuna had pointed out. One of the bullies tried to stop her and had his feet swept up from underneath him for his troubles, Tsuna landing him on his back and giving the older boy a sharp kick to the gut, winding him and effectively knocking him out of the fight.

Everything felt like it was almost happening in slow-motion and he was the only one moving at regular speed. He knew when the next punch or kick was coming. He knew when to duck and when to strike back, more importantly he knew where to hit to make sure the boys stayed down. He didn't need to be taught how to defend himself. He just knew.

He didn't escape the confrontation unscathed, he was years younger than the group of seven older students and even with his instincts running on full-throttle he couldn't dodge all the hits that landed, though he barely even felt it. Adrenaline was running high and his blood was pounding a rhythmic staccato beat in his ears, he almost wanted to stick around to try wipe the floor with these boys but he'd just sent someone off to go get the police.

All he _really_ needed to do was give the girl, Kyoko, enough time to get out of reach. Given his luck he'd be lumped in with the bullies when the police finally meandered on over to see what was going on. Also he needed to keep in mind the fact Ryohei was still bleeding, for all that he looked to be running about as high with fighting spirit and adrenaline as he was, Ryohei was bleeding quite fiercely. He probably needed stitches, head wounds weren't anything to sniff at or try to shrug off.

"How are you doing?" he asked the bleeding boy as he aimed a jab at a kid that was aiming to tackle the third grader to the floor, grunting with the effort it took to knock him off course.

Sasagawa Ryohei's answering grin was blinding.

"I am EXTREMELY fine!" The boy exclaimed, slamming a right hook into the gut of the boy who had tried for a tackle even as he had to wipe a distracted hand across his eyes.

"Sure you are." Tsuna scoffed, pulling out a handkerchief and pressing it onto the other boy's face now that it was safe to do so, the bullies were mostly either winded or down. Taking one of the boy's hands he made sure Ryohei was pressing down on the cloth and gave the remaining bullies passing glare. "Here. Hold this. We need to get going."

"… but we still need to…" Ryohei tried to protest as Tsuna tugged at his other wrist in a tight grip, forcing the older boy to run after him or fall over.

"Get to the park like I told your sister?" Tsuna snapped, fighting the urge to look back and snarl in the boy's face. He knew. It wasn't like he didn't want to stay and teach the boys a lesson they'd never forget, but the police weren't going to be long in coming. Also it he'd seen one of the other boys run off. Who knew if he was running to escape or for reinforcements?

He wanted to roar with the frustration at having to run away. From bullies. He was sick of it, hadn't he had enough of that by now? Well, at the very least the boys who had previously thought it would be fun to pick on two kids were smart enough not to chase after them when they left, either that or they were too busy licking their own wounds. Rounding the corner to the park he all but dragged Ryohei into the public bathroom and waited for a bit to see if anyone had thought to follow them before he turned his attention to the kid he had 'rescued'.

"Stop poking it, you're going to make it bleed worse." Tsuna muttered as he slapped the boy's hands away from exploring the wound. He firmly folded the handkerchief he'd given the boy earlier over the exposed, (and still bleeding wound), and made sure the boy was pressing down on it again. "I know it hurts but you have to keep pressing it down… if you don't want to die of blood loss."

He had to press his hand back against the handkerchief when the boy went to shake his hand and Tsuna hastily used his left instead in order to keep the cloth over the wound. "I'm Sasagawa sibling one, Sasagawa Ryohei!" the kid introduced himself, "It's EXTREMELY great to meet you!"

"Nice to meet you too." Tsuna muttered shortly, giving the excitable kid the handshake he wanted before firmly redirecting the hand he'd taken into pressing against the cloth so he could grab some paper towels from the dispenser on the wall.

"Ooh, they EXTREMELY got me." The boy whispered in quiet awe, which made him turn right back around as fast as he could. Ryohei had peeled the handkerchief back and was examining the cut through his eyebrow in the mirror, leaning in close to get a good look.

"Didn't I JUST tell you not to do that?" Tsuna snapped, one hand reaching forward again to press the cloth down again. "Hold that DOWN while I wet these so we can clean you up a bit and see how bad it is."

The older boy stiffened to attention and clamped down on the handkerchief Tsuna made sure he was pressing to his own eyebrow. He went to keep an eye on him using the mirror as he turned to wet the paper towels but got distracted by the flicker of light reflected in the glass. From his own reflection. Orange light. Small flickers of fire no bigger than a candle-flame were tickling across his forehead and his eyes had changed from brown… to a burning amber that matched the flames perfectly.

"Onii-chan! Where are you?" a familiar voice called out, snapping his attention away from his reflection and suddenly Tsuna was left staring at Ryohei's retreating back as the boy charged out of the bathroom.

"KYOKO! I'm EXTREMELY over here!" the older boy bellowed, charging out of the bathroom without so much as a glance backwards.

"… you're welcome." Tsuna muttered sarcastically after him as he turned off the tap and wadded the unused paper towels into the bin, a huff of amusement escaping him at the energy the kid had put into the sprint. Not even a hit to the head strong enough to make him bleed was enough to get him kid to slow down, took hard-headed to a whole new level. Well, as long as he was fine, his sister would probably drag the hyperactive nutcase to the hospital, they could take care of him there.

Now that Ryohei was no longer there Tsuna turned his attention back to the mirror and stared at his reflection, zeroing in on the flickering candle-like flames at his forehead and met his own eyes. The flames themselves felt hot to the touch, as he discovered when he tested them against with curious fingertips, but didn't burn his skin. He'd… never heard of anything like this before, but in his dreams… he had seen something similar.

Tsuna had spent so many years dreaming of being someone else. Witnessing the world through the eyes of a wizard and feeling the same sensation and emotion. Once upon a time his dream-self had seen a phoenix burn with similar flames, only red and yellow to his orange. He'd also defended himself with the same against a professor intent on killing him.

Relief flooded through him. For the last few weeks he'd started to wonder if perhaps he'd imagined the whole thing, falling from the tree, saving himself and the immediate aftermath, he'd even halfway convinced himself that he'd made it all up. He wasn't exactly the poster-child for normal so one more weird dream on top of the ones he'd already been having was just another drop in the proverbial bucket.

But this. He was seeing this with his own two eyes, he could feel the heat running through his previously chilled system and it made his skin shiver in delight. Had he undone the seal that had been placed over his fla-

Amber sparked behind his eyes.

Staggering, Tsuna caught the lip of the sink as his knees buckled and barely managed to lower himself to the ground as he lost the strength he needed to keep standing. The seal he had thought he'd managed to lift off of himself slammed back into place with a vengeance. He felt himself drop forward and hit the floor with a hard thump and barely even felt it, his vision already darkening to grey around the edges as a numbness started to trickle through his limbs.

The last thing he saw before darkness closed in on him was Ryohei returning to the bathroom with a police officer, seemingly leading him to his rescuer. The adult made a shocked sound and was quick to kneel down next to his prone form. He didn't hear a word of what the man was saying, he was just glad the man was blocking the searing light coming in from the doorway.

The world faded out of focus before the man could even reach him.

OoO

When Tsuna's world came back into focus he was greeted to a view of a hospital room, all white walls and ceiling with green paper curtains separating the bed he'd apparently been sleeping in from the rest of the room. Wincing slightly at the sheer brightness of the sunlight coming in from the windows he bit back a groan and shielded his eyes with a shaking hand. Fantastic. He'd landed himself in hospital.

He didn't bother sitting himself up in bed, his head was weaving far too dizzily for that kind of movement, it was as if the room was tilting and whirling. He closed his eyes against it and rode it out instead, he was weeks into being familiar with the nauseating sensation and it wasn't exactly like he didn't know what it was, he'd just gotten all the confirmation he needed as to where it was coming from. He'd just used his magic, the flames that his grandfather had sealed away, likely as not the seal was overcompensating for what little he'd managed to grasp at by clamping down on him twice as hard.

He couldn't explain everything away as his imagination or a hallucination at this point, now that he knew what he was looking for… he could feel the tight grasping hold the seal had on him and it made his nerves itch. And now that he knew it was all real instead of something he'd dreamed up… he wanted to bite away at it and claw it into shreds.

A distraction came in the form of a voice speaking a little ways away from him, making him tilt his head to the side to see Ryohei speaking to someone who was just out of sight in his own bed behind the paper curtains, probably speaking to his little sister given the tone of voice. "… promise that I'll stop fighting but Kyoko, I'm still a man! There may come a time when I have to fight!"

Tsuna rolled his eyes at that. That kind of attitude towards bullies was like throwing fuel on a fire and all that was going to do was make him an even bigger target... then again Ryohei didn't exactly seem like the type to back down. Wonderful.

"Onii-chan!" Kyoko protested, clearly hearing the stubborn refusal to back down as well.

"… but if it's going to make you cry, I… won't lose again! I'll win!" Ryohei replied in a tone of voice that made this sound like he was making some great concession, instead of giving himself a loophole to continue fighting. Tsuna sighed and wished he'd stayed unconscious long enough not to hear that last part, he had a feeling that he was going to have to keep an eye on Ryohei so he didn't accidentally end up killing himself trying to keep that promise. The older boy almost sounded like he believed his own words too.

Shifting in bed he was able to get a good glimpse of Ryohei without letting the whole room know he was awake around and held back another sigh. Ryohei's whole forehead was bandaged and a patch was covering his left eye. Exactly how bad had the damage been that the doctors thought they'd have to wrap him up that much? He hastily closed his eyes when two pairs of feet came thundering into the ward, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that he was awake and subtly burrowed further under the blankets someone had placed over him.

"Ryohei! Kyoko!"

Letting one eye slit open a little Tsuna peered through his eyelashes at the couple that had burst into the ward and watched as they fussed over their two children and felt something twist in his gut at the sight. Biting his lip he gave up on the pretence that he was sleeping and sat himself up in bed, making to push the bedcovers off of him but then hastily covering himself up again at the biting chill. The warmth he'd managed to drag up out of himself had long-since drained away and had now left him with the agonizing bone-deep and aching _need_ for it back again. He felt some relief from the blanket draped over him but it was hardly enough, someone had changed him out of the warm clothing he'd been wearing into a set of hospital garments. The thin cloth was no protection from the air-conditioned environment of the ward they were in.

If Ryohei's parents were here already… where was his mother? Or did… the hospital not know who he was?

Checking the plastic hospital id looped around his wrist Tsuna sighed. Of course. He hadn't exactly been carrying identification on him when he'd went to go help Ryohei and he'd ditched his backpack in an alleyway. How were the police supposed to figure out who he was without him saying anything? He was listed as Yamada Taro, which was Japan's version of 'John Doe'.

It was a small stroke of luck. If he could slip away without being noticed maybe he'd be able to get away before anyone cornered him for questions. He didn't want his mother finding out he'd been fighting, let alone having ended up in hospital for it. If he could just find his clothes…

Aha! They were in the bedside cabinet.

Slipping into his clothes as fast as he could, to spare himself from the near-freezing environment and to make sure no one caught him in the act, Tsuna stuffed a pillow under the blanket. He then balled up the pyjamas he'd been wearing so they'd make a lump where his head should be on the bed and threw the blanket over the top. At casual glance anyone would hopefully think he was still sleeping and let him 'rest'.

He weaved for a bit when he went to put on his shoes and had to sit himself down on the visitors chair to tie the laces. He was glad that Ryohei made such a lively distraction, he didn't think he'd have been able to make a clean get-away otherwise without someone catching him to grill him over what he'd done.

Peering around the curtain he made sure none of the nurses were paying much attention and casually walked out the door, hoping that no one would think it too odd to see him leaving when he hadn't been seen walking in.

No one blinked twice.

OoO

Tsuna arrived home breathing as hard as if he'd run a marathon and seeing almost double. The sheer amount of effort it had taken to walk home made him want to collapse again and sleep for a week this time instead of the handful of hours it had been since school had officially ended for the day.

Toeing his sneakers off in the doorway Tsuna stumbled up the step leading into the hallway and had to steady himself by planting a hand on the hallway table, which turned out to be a good thing as it brought the phone to his attention. The phone with the 'message waiting' light brightly shining for attention.

Turning down the volume of the device so it was about as low as it could get without being completely silent Tsuna pressed play and listened to the message. The police had called to say that someone had handed his backpack in as lost property at the local police station, would the parents please come pick it up?

He quietly deleted the message.

Picking the phone up from its cradle he padded further into the house and pushed the kitchen door open a little so he could see into where his mother was humming happily to herself over the stove, apparently not having noticed he'd been late in coming home. He hesitated for a brief minute, wondering if he should come clean… but thought better of it. She'd worry herself over nothing. He hadn't actually been injured very much, mostly just a few scrapes, bumps and bruises, and the only reason he'd ended up in hospital was because he'd passed out. Not even from the fight itself.

Unless he wanted to tell her about the cause of his little blackout…

His hand clenched around the phone. How would she react to the idea that her son was a Wizard? Would she love the idea or… would she hate it?

Tsuna bit his lip and flinched at the idea. No, he wasn't anywhere near brave enough to drop something like that into his mother's lap. Not yet anyway. Not when he was this twisted up in confusion. He had so many questions of his own, how was he supposed to answer any questions she'd most-probably ask?

Closing the kitchen door as quietly as he had opened it Tsuna dragged himself away and up the stairs to his room, dialling the number the police officer had left in his message as he went. Might as well let them know the message had been received, they might call back later otherwise.

"Hello? Someone from this number called to say they found my bag?" Tsuna asked lightly to the woman who picked up the phone. "I heard _big_ a fight happening down there and got so scared that I dropped it when I ran away. Thank you for finding it, can I come pick it up in the morning?" he asked in what was hopefully a cheerful voice.

Listening absently as the woman on the other end of the phone started asking questions about the fight he'd mentioned he searched his desk for a pair of scissors and found one in the last drawer. "Fight? No I didn't see any of it, I ran away as soon as I saw what was going on, it was _scary_!"

Tossing the scissors back into the desk drawer after snipping the plastic hospital tag off his wrist he turned to his closet and tucked the hospital bracelet away in the nearly unused toy chest at the back, putting everything back neatly so his mother wouldn't find it. He was pretty sure his mother didn't bother with it unless he had toys lying around. He was too tired to do it now but he'd find somewhere else to get rid of it properly later, if he tried disposing it in the house bin who knew if his mother would find it? "Yes, I'll pick it up before school tomorrow, thank you very much for your had work!" he replied to the question the woman asked about his bag. Hanging up the phone when the woman did he dug around his closet for the extra cans of hair colour he had stashed away under his spare jackets and did a few mental calculations, glad he'd bought the bulk packet when he'd gone in earlier in the week.

He guessed he was going to be sticking with brunet for a while.

Tsuna pushed the cans of hair colour back into his closet, dropped the phone onto his desk and crawled into bed without changing into his pyjamas.

He was too tired to even bother changing out of his clothes.

OoO

Tsuna dreamed.

They weren't peaceful dreams, some would have called them a nightmares but they were far too detailed to be so simple. In these dreams Tsu-kun wasn't a little kid. He didn't have blond hair and brown eyes and the only time he'd ever heard of Japan was in casual reference and in a joke made by… someone he was related to.

In some of these dreams he was younger, but in most he was older. He was taller, faster and stronger than he was in real life and whenever he caught sight of himself in a mirror he was looking at a face that was completely different from his own. Hair that was messy like his but jet black instead of caramel blond. Sharp, electric green eyes stared back at him instead of his mother's brown and a lightning bolt scar was prominently visible on his forehead.

In his dreams he wasn't a grade-schooler. He was a wizard. A wizard fighting for his life. And these dreams, when they came, they _burned_. He felt every moment as if he lived it himself. Felt every emotion like it was his own and owned the pain that came with every injury and suffered through each and every loss.

He flew, he fought, he laughed and argued. Explored a castle and attended lessons with other witches and wizards like himself. He made and lost friends. He lived with every intention of surviving to the next moment, the next day and the next year but always with a nasty little voice whispering seeds of doubt into his ear.

In these dreams he wasn't the only child of two distant parents. He was an orphan, sole survivor of a loving family cut down in an attack before he'd even turned two years old and he was famous for it. In his dreams he wasn't Sawada Tsunayoshi, he was Harry James Potter, The Boy Who Lived.

And that changed everything.

Now that he knew that at least a small element of the dreams he'd been having his entire life weren't just dreams he felt raw with the need to feel it again. To feel the warmth running through his body in the way it was supposed to. He wanted to be able to walk more than two steps without planting his face into the sidewalk. To be able to concentrate when he wanted to without his attention wandering. He wanted to be able to grab at his magic without being forced into nap-time whenever he tried grabbing at it.

And he did try grabbing at it, practically every day, _several_ times a day if he could manage it. He had to suffer through the consequences each time though, everyone that knew him now knew that he was now prone to lapsing into bouts of unconsciousness. The doctors his mother took him to called it 'Narcolepsy' and prescribed him medications that had so-far proven useless in treating the 'condition'. Medication he tossed down the drain instead of taking. He knew they would end up being useless, he only fell unconscious when he poked at the 'lid' the man had left on the heat that had been with him his entire life.

Whether he was startled into doing so, if he got too excited or reached for it on purpose or not, every time he tried to pull his 'flames' up further than the tight grasp the 'lid' had on the ball it had compacted his flames in... the lid stretching over that ball of heat squashed any attempts to grab at his flames with disturbing ease it and enforced the consequences with nap-time. As in it knocked him unconscious. Every. Single. Time.

He kept on poking at the 'lid' on his magic regardless of forced nap-time for two reasons. One, because even after all the time that had passed from that day the old man had locked him down… every fibre of his being fought against it. Hated being trapped, caged like he was some kind of animal and denied reaching for the only source of heat that affected him anymore. The other reason was that he just plain _needed_ that warmth, needed it like a drowning man needed air and he wouldn't have been able to resist its siren-call for anything.

This had to be some form of Masochism. Either that or some measure of Harry's stubbornness had somehow leaked out of Tsuna's dreams and latched onto him. Months later and he was _still_ poking at the thing stretched over his Flames regardless of forced nap-time.

There were times though when he could force some of that heat up past the relentless grip the old man had locked his 'flames' down with. Moments of relief where he could flood his body with that delicious warmth and revel in it, discovered mostly in thanks to his 'saving people thing'.

The fight against the Sasagawa sibling's bullies had opened his eyes in more ways than one, the realization that he hadn't imagined the flames that had saved him from quite the nasty fall was one of them. The other… was in how the stupid seal over his flames worked.

It itched. He wanted to crawl out from underneath his own skin and rip at it until it dissolved but he knew he wouldn't be able to reach it that way. Every time he so much as scratched at its surface the fading amber flames, so close to the same colour of his own flames that it made it hard difficult to distinguish were his flames began and ended, he paid for it. By sleeping it off. However he was slowly getting a better idea of how it worked.

Its hold on him was at its strongest during the morning and weakened throughout the day towards evening and night-time, this was when good little boys and girls were supposed to be winding down for the day and going to sleep. This was the time that, with the right mental push, he could drown himself in as much flames as he wanted and not suffer the usual consequences until he was good and ready to. When circumstances were just right he could choose when and where he was going to drop.

Sometimes, if he was patient enough, he could drown himself in the sensation for an entire night by working himself up to a great big push. Several nights NOT touching the seal, behaving like a good little boy, before flipping the seal off as hard as he could. It took longer for it to re-establish its hold when he yanked it off that hard and, of course, the payback was almost an entire day of nap-time with several days of what felt like a hang-over...

But it was WORTH it.

For those glorious few moments he was warm, warm and free. It didn't feel the same as it had that day falling out of the tree. He was only managing to grasp at a very small portion of his abilities and probably wouldn't be able to reach for the rest until the seal holding him down either dissolved on its own or was forced to. He could live with that, it was the best he was capable of reaching for now and as desperate as he was for it he would take what he could get!

His 'Grandfather's' handy-work didn't stop with the 'Narcolepsy', he could deal with nap-time if that's all that resulted from the man's one and only visit to their house. No. Separate to the sleepy-time he had to suffer through he was also now prone to vicious headaches, ones that popped up only whenever he had one of his 'Harry Potter' dreams. The mental burn of these dreams followed him into the waking world. Each dream bringing forth something familiar to him in the same way English was and he managed to finally match the English term with its Japanese counterpart.

Migraines.

He couldn't even tell his mother what was causing them, even when she brought him to the doctors again and _they_ started asking questions. He knew what would happen if he told anyone the truth, his dreams causing migraines? There was only one term for that and he already knew the Japanese counterpart for that one. Crazy wasn't exactly an uncommon word.

He wasn't crazy, he knew exactly what was causing his headaches. Where he'd once been able to have these dreams without feeling like his head was being split open and roasted over an open fire Tsuna now couldn't escape the near-crippling pain that now came with them. The only thing that had changed, or had happened, was that encounter with his grey haired 'Grandpa'.

The migraines didn't seem _directly_ related to the 'lid' keeping him trapped but they were most-definitely a side-effect of it being there.

There WAS an upside to these dreams, side-effects that followed him into the waking world. Bullies no longer seemed quite so threatening, or threatening at all. Getting chased and harassed by kids in elementary school wasn't exactly on the same level as being hunted by Death Eaters and Snatchers. After a while he got sick of dodging them all and snapped. Turned around and made them regret targeting him after a vicious tug at his hair broke the last thread of his patience. The resulting brawl had been a long time coming.

He didn't need someone tugging on his hair when he was already suffering from a headache. If he had to walk around in pain then damned if he wasn't going to share it. He liked being generous that way. Maybe now they'd think twice before picking on a 'soft' target. 'Kittens' had claws and even 'bunnies' would go for the jugular if threatened enough. So help the next person who compared him to either of those animals again though, they'd earn themselves a good hard punch to the face or perhaps a kick to the fork of their legs. He was open to dishing out either of those. He just wished he could figure out what it was about him that made him look like such a tempting target.

He was getting heartily sick of this stupid game of cat and mouse the bullies of Namimori were playing with him.

OoO

Settling into a routine over the next couple of months Tsuna put everything he had into pushing against the seal placed over him. He knew it had been placed on him with the best of intentions but… it was clearly faulty and needed to be removed. He just needed to be careful with how he went about doing it.

Daylight was spent preserving as much energy as he could, the hideouts he had all over the town almost became like second homes in how often he visited each one and how long he spent in them. School hours were spent keeping his head down during class and on the computers at the library during each break or leafing through the scarce few books on magic the school owned. It was all pretty much fairy tales and fiction novels but it was a way to pass the time as the hours dragged on by.

He didn't really expect to find anything on the internet about magic, let alone whatever manifestation of it he was expressing, (because the Statue of Secrecy was a thing wasn't it?) but it didn't really hurt. Reading through the random stories that popped up was, at the very least, entertaining enough in its sheer absurdity that he caught himself having to stifle a laugh every now and then.

Who had ever heard of vampires that sparkled in the sunlight? Werewolves that played lacrosse without anyone who was watching the game noticing? Some of the things he came across were so hilariously inaccurate he had to get up and walk away to stop himself laughing out loud in the library.

He waved away invitations by the book club, practically every day, and sat himself at a desk to 'study' or plop himself down on a bean-bag to nap lunchtime away. He spent some time after school helping the librarian close down the library, more to avoid the bulk of the kids going home than for any other reason and made his cautious way home afterwards. He ate dinner with his mother and went directly upstairs to bed.

Or at least his mother thought he was in bed.

Three days out of the week it was actually true. He was saving his energy for the _other_ days in the week. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays were spent curled up in bed, dead to the world and recuperating from what he did on the nights of the other four days in the week. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays were a different story.

On those days he washed the temporary dye out of his hair and stuffed his bed with a few jackets as he waited for his hair to dry. It was stupidly easy to slip out of the house without his mother noticing. She never remembered to lock the front door.

There was a recently abandoned bowling alley not too far from his house, the owner had gone bankrupt and had attempted to sell the place with absolutely no luck, it had been left alone to slowly fall apart. Tsuna had only found a way in by complete accident, having been taking a 'short cut' through the alleyway that ran along the side of the building and had fallen over his own feet. He didn't know how it had happened but he'd ended up tripping and falling through a ground-level window. One that had apparently been left unlocked.

The bowling lanes made for a great practice arena, or at the very least the seats at the END of those lanes made for great napping lounges.

The isolated location was perfect, at least for accessing his magic. The ability he was always drawing on was dangerous, not just in the sheer level of heat it generated but in the spiking levels of emotion it seemed to drown him in. Normally he was calm and collected, nervous most of the time now due to the seal placed on him, irritated when pushed, (but then who wouldn't get irritated with the number of people thinking he made a nice target?), he was cautious and mostly level-headed.

So where had that temper come from?

During the fight that had allowed him to reach past the seal to his flames… he'd felt violent. Vicious. Like he wanted to continue fighting no matter what. He'd been angry, not just angry but furious in a way he didn't like. It felt natural, but it wasn't. He hadn't been like that before, hadn't felt like that before his grandfather had visited either. Was this another side-effect of the seal or was this the flames themselves? It might even be a mixture of both. Who knew how dangerous that kind of affected temper would be if left alone?

Whatever the reason, he needed to control it. Harry Potter had been prone to bouts of rage but he'd learned how. If Harry had learned to control it then so could he. He had to have been getting those dreams for a reason.

Right?

OoO

Chapter end~!

It's a good place to stop, otherwise I'm going to go crazy. Poor Tsu-chan, so confused, don't worry~ It won't last… Reborn is coming in a few... years. *cough*


	3. Chapter 3

In the year between the ages of five and six years old Tsuna managed to get used to the unnatural cold the seal placed over his magic had left him with and, as predicted, he was slowly starting to feel numb to the sensation. He was even able to function almost as normal with a bit of practice. He learned to cope with the dizzy spells and vertigo, how best to ride them out and prevent them. What triggered an attack and what shortened the duration.

He layered clothing, adopted almost religious use of scarves and mittens, bought every kind of glove imaginable and went through pairs of socks like a heavy smoker went through cigarettes. He was always losing at least one out of every second pair and as a result stopped caring if they matched and just pulled on what he could get his hands on, the result was often eye-catching but strangely fun.

He also figured out ways to curb his newfound ability to trip over practically nothing, he just had to take it slow, make sure he knew exactly where he was putting his feet and look where he was going. It was simple in theory but putting it into practice was a surprisingly difficult habit to get into, it had taken him the better part of three painful months to make himself adhere to the new self-imposed rules and he was still backsliding.

It probably didn't help that four nights of the week he was free of these restrictions.

He lived for those nights.

It was about the only reason he even dragged himself out of bed sometimes. The only reason he kept dragging himself to school and back, why he didn't just give up and roll under the constant harassment he took from what felt like all corners of the world. For a few precious hours he was everything he wasn't during the day.

Warm. Strong. Coordinated.

The bowling alley he'd found when he was five fast became a home-away-from-home. He smuggled in blankets and pillows, stole his father's camping gear and made himself a little hideout where he could practice calling his flame to him in the comfort of thermal clothing and sleeping bags.

It took him months to learn the exact steps. Months of relentless, stubborn and persistent war against the stupid seal to flip the lid off his flames and flood himself in as much warmth as he wanted, whenever he wanted. He knew he was still a long way away from fully getting rid of it but he was finally making headway against it. More to that he was slowly learning what these flames did and how they worked.

He could warm himself up, that was the obvious one. The second thing he could do with his flames was light things on fire, again that was obvious. What wasn't as obvious was that any fire lit by said flames continued to produce the kind of warmth that soaked through his skin and warmed him up regardless of whether he continued to keep the lid on his own flames open or let it slam shut. He'd learned that one on an absolutely horrible wet day when he'd been soaked almost all the way through because he'd fallen into one too many puddles.

He'd been cold, frustrated and miserable when he'd realized that he'd run out of matches so he'd reached for his flames without thinking and lit the little charcoal burner his father had used to cook snacks for himself on the porch. The kindling had caught on fire and had lit up the coals lining the bottom of the grill in a merry play of orange. The heat from that fire had been bone-melting and wonderful.

The seal had been quick to slam down on him that time, it had been early-days in the fight against it and he'd woken up _gutted_ with disappointment. Right up until he realized the small charcoal burner was still producing the same bone-melting heat that had washed over him before.

The coals had still been hot and the fire had still been burning.

He discovered that as long as the fire had enough fuel and burned with even just the tiniest hint of orange then the flames would warm him up the same way as if they running through him. He'd almost started crying. It had been the first major discovery he'd had regarding his flames, the first thing that had shown him that he wasn't just wasting his time. It had then been the gateway into his next discovery.

Every chance he had after that had him thinking of ways to preserve that flame in something portable. He tried everything from jam jars to tin cans and ceramic bowls. He even tested pots, pans, tea kettles and everything in between. He raided second-hand shops for all manner of containers and picked through the recycling his mother prepared to throw out.

Glass, metal, paper, plastic, cardboard, fibre glass, stone or clay. It didn't matter, if he could get his hands on it he tried it.

Sadly it seemed as though precious metals made for the best containers. He'd found a small and tarnished silver flask on another trip to the second hand store, finding it buried half under a bunch of brass plates and gave it a shot. He hadn't expected much, his hope of finding a passable container had been dwindling, so far the best had been a jug, (a brass one), found on an earlier trip but even that hadn't lasted very long.

The cashier had let him have it for a steal too, she had gotten rather familiar with him and the choices he made and hadn't looked very closely at what he brought to her to bag. To be fair he hadn't even realized what he had until he'd cleaned it up in preparation for the experiment. He'd tested his flame on an empty planter once, clumps of dirt still sticking to its sides, and had regretted it immediately afterwards when he'd been showered with smouldering dirt and ash. Needless to say that had been the first and last time he'd tested his flame against a dirty container.

The silver flask had held his flame and hadn't melted from the heat. It hadn't buckled, warped or cracked. It not only held its shape but once his flames settled inside… it radiated heat like the best and most amazing hot-water-bottle in existence.

He carried it everywhere with him.

He slept with it tucked in his shirt at night and curled around it for warmth. It sat in a fold of his scarf, tucked in a glove or in a pocket when he was awake. He took it into the bath one night and dropped it in tub, if the water hadn't then taken on the same heating properties as the flames he may have started crying. As it was his flames had, (luckily!), still been merrily burning away in the flask when he'd drained it, they were completely unharmed by being submerged in water. His mother no longer had to wrestle him into the bathtub, instead she now had trouble getting him _out_, she now waited until he was too drunk on the heat to protest when she finally dragged him out of the water.

With a little trial and error, (more error than trial), Tsuna discovered that the flames lasted longer if he poured more emotion into it, like the Patronus Charm in his dreams. If he lit his flames with enough of the right emotion… then the flames he planted in the flask could last as for up to as long as two weeks without the need to relight it!

The emotion he realized worked the best for him to remember and channel into his flames was the one that had him running to the Sasagawa siblings rescue. The will to protect. That 'saving people thing' he'd picked up from the teenager in his dreams. If he drowned himself in that moment, that feeling and whole-hearted emotion… the flames he produced always burned the brightest and warmest. Anything else just left a bad taste in his mouth.

That flask was his life-line in a lot of ways.

The best thing he realized was that ANYTHING poured into the flask took on those same warming qualities. Water was a given but he tried milk with the same result, every kind of juice imaginable, (which had also had his taste-buds dancing), and had then tried tea… and had instantly become utterly and hopelessly addicted to drinking from it. The world was brighter and every thought, action and reaction was faster with his flames running through his system and when he flipped that mental lid? It was as if he had shrugged off mortal limitations. The feeling was always fleeting and momentary but for that brief time… he felt like he could take on the world and win.

The flask also helped soothe away the ache when pressed to his forehead during a migraine faster than his usual method of finding somewhere dark and quiet to ride it out. He'd found a way to cope with the daylight effects of the seal but he wasn't about to give up now. He still had to deal with the clamping aspects of it. He may have found a way to… drown out the effects but they were still there and they needed to go. All it would take was ONE accidental reach for his flames and subsequent let-go at the wrong place and at the wrong time and it could spell death for him. He'd found some relief and now he could finally start concentrating on piecing his life back together without the constant cold dragging him down.

Along with the flames boosting his natural abilities to ridiculous levels it did the same to his emotions, and it was a LOT more difficult to temper these emotions than it was to control said flames. He tried his best though, how was he going to be able to live with himself if he lost himself every time he wanted to warm himself up?

How had that body-guard put it when he'd been five? Rage-monster. He didn't want to turn into a rage-monster but he knew he was close to it, teetering on the hair-thin edge of it and the only way he knew how to avoid that particular fate was to practice untill he figured out how to ride it out. Which was a hell of a lot easier said than done.

The first emotion he'd noticed when he'd first pulled on his flames so far had been fear, brought on by falling out of the tree. The second time after that had been rage, not on behalf of himself but on behalf of another. He had been terrified that the rage from the time he had helped the Sasagawa siblings would be part-and-parcel with the flames but after a while he'd discovered that those fears had been, mostly, unfounded.

The best way to describe it was like being hyped up on a sugar-rush.

His flames fanned his emotions into a fever pitch and left him staggering afterwards. It was hard to pull that back to concentrate on control, he always ended up throwing his all into whatever he put his mind to and only just managed to remember to fill up his flask before he passed out each time. The gung-ho attitude was exhausting, and on the tip of his tongue were words that startled him each and every time he lit his flame.

He did everything 'With his Dying Will.'

It was honestly the creepiest thing that had ever tried tripping out of his mouth. Dying Will? What the hell was that? He hadn't heard anything like that even in his dreams as Harry Potter, and that was really saying something given the amount of assorted gribbly monsters, plants and people the Wizard had tangled with over the course of his life.

Thinking of his flames as something closely related to death and dying made a scary amount of sense though. Wizards, hell even regular humans, were capable of amazing feats when push came to shove. Accidental magic was one thing, then there were the stories you could pick up from just about anywhere of people who did impossible things when the chips were down. Most people called it adrenaline, fear giving that almighty push needed to get things done, and others just accepted it as a fact of life.

It certainly fit with the way the flames flipped his emotions into overdrive.

He knew there was more to his flames than what he was accessing and it was driving him to distraction. All he could do and all he could reach for was the _heat,_ and as nice as that was… it wasn't enough. He wanted to throw himself into his magic and he wanted to do it now. He was fast running out of patience with the slow progress he was making with the seal and even though he was slowly managing to draw out the time limit for how long he could hold the lid off his flames… it was frustrating beyond belief. The thought that he could whether through six years of this had been hopelessly naive.

If only one year had been this hard… was he even going to make it to the next year without giving up?

Not that he wasn't coming up with his own answers, he was slowly, agonizingly slowly, starting pick up little bits and pieces of information. Some of these came from playing around with his flames but most realizations came in the form of accidents.

A class project where everyone had to plant sunflowers in old ice-cream containers, a classmate bumping into him from behind and he'd dropped a full flask of his precious tea over the seeds directly after planting them. A few tears over the waste and a week later Tsuna was the 'proud' owner of the biggest and brightest sunflowers in the class.

The gardening club were now butting heads with the book club over which club Tsuna was going to join. He didn't care, as long as they didn't bother him with it he was going to ignore them both, he didn't have the energy to waste getting in the middle of that argument. He'd just let them argue it out and then turn down the winner. Problem solved.

The teacher allowed him take the flowers home when he asked if he could and had ruffled his hair as he left, he had a feeling the woman thought he was bringing them home for his mother. It hadn't been his first thought but maybe they'd make a good gift when he was done with them. There had to be a reason why his sunflowers had ended up growing up so bright and healthy and he was pretty sure he knew the reason why.

He hadn't noticed it at school, the classrooms were large and airy with at least one window open at all times and the doors constantly opened and closed, then there were the fans and air vents… but now that he'd brought the sunflowers home he realised they were giving off a subtle wave of warmth. It was nowhere near the kind of heat coming off his flask but it was still a very welcome discovery, it was a bit like what he remembered sunlight had felt like. A warmth that lightly brushed up against his skin.

The seeds the flowers produced grew up the same as the parent flowers, only with very subtle hints of orange threading through the veins of the petals. Planting these flowers in their garden had warmth radiating all the way to the veranda. The neighbours started to compliment his mother on her gardening skills, only to then focus on him when she giggled and mentioned that she hadn't planted them.

"Tsu-kun likes to play with the flowers! He's such a sweet boy!"

Correcting his mother's mistaken impression would have been an exercise in frustration so he just let her continue thinking he loved gardening. It wasn't like the impression was doing him any harm, if anything the neighbours found it charming and 'swapped' packets of flower and vegetable seeds for the sunflowers he had left over. He didn't mind handing them out, the flowers grew obnoxiously large and the plants produced more seeds than he was ever going to be able to find room for.

Following the discovery that plants fed with the flame-saturated water/tea Tsuna, very grudgingly, tested out exactly how much of the precious flame-infused liquid various plants needed in order to produce the same warming effects as the sunflowers. Fortunately for him he only ever needed a drop from his flask into a watering can and he had enough for the plants surrounding his house. Flowers in a vase of more diluted water even managed to warm his room up to bearable levels.

These discoveries may have been small, but when put together it made the all difference between unbearable and bearable. It was the only reason he made it through the year without breaking down.

OoO

Tsuna abandoned his cautious experiments with plants and flowers in the year he turned seven, not out of choice but out of necessity, he could no longer afford it. He needed every drop of energy he could squeeze of out the flames he kept in his flask and he no longer had the luxury of wasting it in the way he had been doing.

The change came in the form of a post card he found in the mail one morning. Or rather, the postcard would have been a warning had he been paying any sort of attention to it. Instead of reading it Tsuna looked at the front, checked the sender and immediately decided it wasn't worth reading.

It was from his father.

This was the only way he ever heard from the man. On New Year's day and Christmas his father would send him greetings in the form of postcards. This year was the same only this time the card had polar bears on it. Staring wordlessly at the small rectangle of card the seven year old twitched. Was he was _supposed_ to believe his father was working in the north pole? With polar bears? When his mother was under the impression the man worked for an oil-rig?

Tsuna carefully checked the letterbox for any more surprises and shut it lightly, making sure his shaking hands didn't accidentally slam it closed. He carefully ducked back into the house and tossed the 'letter' on the kitchen table for his mother to read and coo over and got ready for school. He didn't bother getting excited over the postcard, he'd made that mistake when he was six and been bitterly disappointed.

He didn't know what he'd been hoping for more, seeing his father again or getting an explanation for what had happened the last time the man had been home. Things were different now, he knew what he wanted more this time and he'd long since run out of patience. He wanted to pin the man down for answers and not let him go until he got them.

School was uneventful, breaks were spent in the library as always and he then spent the hours until classes ended either by staring out the window or mourning over the dwindling supply of flames he had left in his flask. He was close to running out, the flames inside had already extinguished and while the tea inside was still lovely and warm… he only had about a cups worth left. He was going to have to refill it very soon or he was going to have to suffer the cold until he finally worked up the energy to flip the seal again.

He left for home after helping the librarian close up and began the trek home as usual and kept an eye out for any potential bullies… which was why he missed it when a man followed him after exiting the school gates. He simply didn't pay attention.

That mistake nearly cost him his life.

He'd let his guard down. He was so used to his assailants being around his age or a year or two older that he hadn't even thought twice about the adults he walked past every day. He certainly hadn't thought anything unusual of the brown haired man that followed him one day. Tsuna had seen the man in the few days previous, shopping, walking a dog, and had even seen him sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper when his mother had stopped by to chat with the local mothers. The man hadn't even looked up at him, made any sign that the man was in any way interested in him or his mother and nothing about him had seemed suspicious in the least.

Tsuna learned his lesson the hard way.

The man had been standing over the bonnet of his car one day with a map spread out over it when he saw him next, with a phone in one hand and a lost look on his tanned face. He would have walked right past the man had the man not caught his eyes with his own and waved him to a stop, seemingly to ask for directions.

"Hello boya!" the man had greeted warmly with a grin crinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes. He tucked his phone away into a pocket so he could crouch down to his level and held the map out to him. "Can you tell me how to get to Namimori Library? I think I'm lost."

Tsuna laughed despite himself. "You must have a very bad sense of direction, the Library is pretty far from here but I can tell you where you can catch the bus."

"Oh? Where?" the man asked, green eyes tracing the map even as he held it out for him to take.

He fell for it, moving closer without a second thought, fully and completely taken in by this guy's act. Focusing on the map Tsuna didn't notice the man drop his end of the map and instead took it into both hands so he could see it properly, stretching it out so he could get a better look. He scanned the map, turned it the right way up, located the library and was just about to turn around to show the man when he was grabbed roughly from behind and a wet cloth was pressed over his mouth and nose.

He didn't even understand what was going on at first. He instinctively dropped the map and went to claw at the arms holding it to his face but felt his arms go weak. It never even occurred to him to try reaching for his flames, it all happened so fast. He had just enough time to register the chemical smell of whatever was soaked into the cloth that was pressed against his face before his world went dark.

OoO

Tsuna regained consciousness with a bad taste in his mouth and a foul smell tickling through his airways. He kept still, wanting to avoid the nauseating effects sitting up usually had on him whenever he was knocked into nap-time and waited till the queasiness in his stomach started to fade. What the hell had happened? He'd been walking home from school, he'd stopped to help that guy find the library and then…

The man had knocked him unconscious. With a chemical. Probably the same chemical that had left the bad taste in his mouth. Flinching minutely as the memory returned he forced himself to relax even as his heart pounded in his chest. Had he just been kidnapped?

Carefully keeping as still as he possibly could Tsuna opened one eye and had to squint through the hair that had fallen over his face. He was lying on his side on the floor of an old, and empty, building. That was obvious by the lack of furniture and bare concrete floor, it must have formerly been an office building given the white board still attached to the wall and the stray pieces of cubicle parts lying around.

His kidnapper was facing the window, staring outside and down, that meant they were either on a second or third floor. Shifting lightly Tsuna tried to move and immediately stopped himself when he realized his hands had been tied behind his back. He wasn't going to make any noise, not with his kidnapper just across the room regardless of the fact that the man was busy arguing with whoever was on the other end of the phone conversation he was having.

"…blond. You said the kid was blond. I've got a brunet here. The hell is going on?"

Oh god, his kidnapper was an idiot. He didn't know if this was good or bad, on one hand it was great that this guy was apparently too dumb to check the bag Tsuna had been carrying. Not only would that have confirmed his identity it would have also revealed the box of comb-in hair colour Tsuna always kept on him. On the other hand… as stupid as this guy was he might just consider killing him and continue on looking for his 'real' target.

And he was this man's target, that much was obvious. The man had said he was looking for a blond, barring Sasagawa Kyoko and he was the only blond in his school, the only blond _boy_ in the area.

"Don't fuck with me! Your information had better be one hundred percent positive because I didn't sign up to murder innocent fucking kids without reason! He had better not be a body double! Check your facts and get back to me, If Sawada Iemitsu catches wind of this kid going missing I'd rather not have the entire CEDEF and the Vongola crawling up my ass! How do I know you haven't just let me walk into a goddamned trap?"

Tsuna felt the blood drain out of his face.

This… was about his father? What the hell had the man gotten him mixed up in that a… hit man? A hit man had kidnapped him and was apparently waiting on confirmation in order to carry out a hit? He'd long since guessed that his father wasn't exactly a 'man of the earth', as his mother put it, and he was hardly going to believe the man raised polar bears in Antarctica or wherever but… A hit man going after his family? What? Why?

He burned the names the man had mentioned into his memory. CEDEF. Vongola. As soon as he got out he was going to look those names up and. Get. Some. Answers. And he was going to get out. Get away from this idiot who had stumbled over some hair dye. He was going to find the nearest police station and tell them what happened. He was going to escape.

With his Dying Will.

Flipping the lid off his flames had never been so easy and his flames burned silently through a good solid section of the rope that held his arms bound behind his back, thoughts turned to crystal in his mind and suddenly the world was in sharp and perfect contrast. He knew that he could, if he wanted to, lunge forward and grab this man's face with his bare hands and just let the world BURN for a little bit, all that would be left of the man would be a pile of fine ash.

Harry Potter had done it once so he knew how to do it. It wouldn't even be all that difficult. However… if he got rid of this one hit-man, there would be others. Others he'd have to burn after this one and once he burned one it would only get easier and easier to burn others. Once he took that step… he didn't know if he'd be able to pull himself back from that kind of act.

Burning the man into a pile of ash would be very easy right now… but would it be right? He could call it self-defence until he was blue in the face and ran out of air but would it really BE self-defence if he was fully capable of running away? Of convincing the man who held him captive that he DID in fact have the wrong kid?

It would be tricky, as much of an idiot this guy was a single slip up would give the man all the reason he needed to put a bullet into his skull but the only other choice he had was… not something he was even willing to consider, not if he could help it. He'd keep that as a last resort, something to consider _if_ and only _after_ he'd exhausted all other options.

If he couldn't convince this guy he had the wrong kid. If he couldn't successfully run away…

Pushing the thought out of his mind for the moment Tsuna reached a quick hand out over to his backpack and brushed his fingers across the surface, sending his flames forward to silently consume it. If he didn't manage to get away then he wasn't going to give the man the chance to discover his mistake in not checking the bag. Thank god he'd switched from using the spray on hair colour to the cheaper comb-in one last year, the can wouldn't have been nearly so easy to destroy.

The man didn't turn around at the brief flash of orange that lit up the room and Tsuna allowed himself a relieved breath and tried not to feel disappointed at the reaction. He wondered when he was going to find someone who COULD see the flames, he was honestly starting to look forward to the day he'd find some clue as to what was going on with him and his family… besides drawing hit-men.

The man had a gun sitting up on the window-sill next to his hand with a silencer attached, there was a sport's bag in the corner of the room and a crate sitting to the side with a whole bunch of loose-leaf papers littering the floor. School and hospital records from what Tsuna could see as he was slowly sat himself up. This man had done his research. Exactly how long had the man been watching him?

The man had been in his records, had likely noticed that his health and grades had taken a sharp dip two years ago, was that what had made the man think he was dealing with a body double? His hair colour could have been the straw that broke the camel's back as far as doubts as to his identity went. Looking at that this man didn't seem as stupid as his first impression would have him believe but… a panicked and nervous man with a gun wasn't exactly a better trade-off.

Trying to scare this guy would be a mistake, he was just going to have to play up on the man's first impression. Body double. He could do that. He had an ace up his sleeve, one he hadn't told anyone about, one he'd gone to great lengths to conceal and he'd never been so glad he'd done so.

The man had been speaking to his partner in English. It was a language 'Sawada Tsunayoshi' shouldn't know. A language that hadn't even been introduced into the school curriculum yet and one he hadn't so much as hinted at knowing. The man had his grades and health reports, it wouldn't take very much to believe that he was struggling with another language. Also if the man thought he was a body double that meant there would be no further reason to try and go for his mother, cause if the kid was a plant… then the mother would surely be one as well, one that was more dangerous to confront.

All Tsuna had to do now was sell the idea.

Swallowing against the bile that rose up in his throat at the idea of this man coming anywhere near his mother he carefully rolled himself up onto his knees, keeping a hold of the rope he had burned through with both hands so it wouldn't make any noise falling to the floor. Pretending he was still tied up he slowly edged his way to the door, never once turning his back on the man. Remembering the feeling he had woken up with he shifted his face into a dizzy look and made himself stumble.

His goal wasn't to make an escape, (as easy as that would be right now), his goal was to get the man's attention. Grab a bit of the very real fear running through him and act the part of a body-double.

Easier said than done, he was having a hard time keeping his face from shifting into a glare. This man was a killer and he was also having trouble trying to feel intimidated by him, which had to be some kind of irony right there. Death Eaters were scarier than this guy, so were snatchers and Voldmort won the prize for sheer fear-factor. Was it bad that he was comparing real-life adversaries with the ones in his dreams? Right now he kind of wished Harry Potter's reaction to fear wasn't quite so infectious, he needed to look _intimidated_ and _scared_ right now, not confrontational!

Harmless. Fluffy. The man had read his records so he had to know he health problems, he could play on that... Allowing himself to trip backward Tsuna caught himself up against the wall and let his hair hang over his face, panted a little as if he had just woken up and was having more than a little trouble focusing. See? Look. Brown hair. Not blond. Sick and weak. Not who you're looking for at all!

He allowed himself to slip down the wall a little and tilted his head a bit to get a better look at his kidnapper, peering through his hair at the man. He knew that if he caught the man's eyes fully with his own this little act he was pulling wouldn't hold much water, the glare he was fighting would be all too visible, but if he squinted through it… it would hopefully make him look like he was fighting tears.

Tears. There was an idea. Sad things. He needed to think sad things. Now. Homeless puppies, stray kittens, injured bunnies. He needed to pull up the emotional-boosting effects of his flames! What a time for the world to go crystal-clear! Push away the clarity, bring on the emotional overdrive! His life wasn't the only one in danger, if he didn't pull this off then his mother would be in danger too!

There, that did it. He felt a tear trace the outer curve of his cheek and felt his breath hitch at the idea of his mother having to face a hit-man. By the time the man fully turned around Tsuna's vision was swimming with tears and it wasn't very difficult to flinch away from the man when he moved.

There was a silent standoff for a moment, the man then lowered the mobile he was holding so that he set it down on the window sill and pick up his gun instead.

"So Sleeping Beauty finally wakes. Nothing personal kid, but business is business. First up, your name."

"Ha… Sa… Sawada Tsunayoshi." Tsuna stuttered as he tightened the grip he had on the rope he was holding, this man… wasn't going to like being 'lied' to. He was right. Tsuna had barely gotten his name out before the man was suddenly right in front of him, crossing the distance between them in three long-legged strides and slapping his free hand across his face.

The world spun for a moment and it was all he could do to keep a hold of the rope behind his back with both hands. He tasted blood, must have cut his cheek on his teeth, and tried not to pass out as the man lifted him up by the front of his jacket. He was pretty sure that hit would have knocked him unconscious had he not been actively channelling flames. Tears sprang for real from his eyes as his cheek throbbed with the hit, they even continued to fall as he squeezed his eyes shut. Don't glare. Don't glare.

"Don't lie to me kid. I don't like dealing with liars. Do you know what I do to liars? I kill them. So, I'll ask you again. What's your name?"

"H… Harry Potter." Tsuna replied as he forcibly made himself slump in the man's grip, fighting the very real urge to _bite_ the man. The man's hand was within reach, as was his face. All he'd have to do was let go of the rope he was pretending to still be bound by and reach forward… but no. He'd started this, chosen the path he wanted to take already, he wasn't about to risk this man targeting his mother.

The man's eyebrows rose at the name and instantly switched to English, probably to test him "Age?"

"Seven." Tsuna mumbled, staying as limp as possible. He was supposed to be feeling helpless. Scared. He was hoping the man was taking his shaking as fright. Fighting the urge to burn the man's face off was starting to physically hurt. The muscles in his arms were protesting against the grip he had on the rope he was forcing himself to keep holding behind his back.

"Hmph! You sound British, where did they pick you up? London?"

"Privet Drive, Little Whinging Surry." He replied, making sure that accent sounded across loud and clear. The question may have sounded rhetorical but Tsuna wasn't about to let go of the chance to hammer in the idea that he was a body double in as hard and firmly as he possibly could.

"Son of a bitch." The man muttered, dropping him to the floor. "I knew this hit was going far too smoothly for such a high profile target!"

High profile? Biting his lip against a pained groan Tsuna carefully wiped the tears away from his vision and watched the man sharply as he turned to retrieve his phone. He seemed convinced he'd gotten the wrong kid and was now speaking to whoever had hired him for the job, relaying the information he'd just 'retrieved' from him.

"He's not lying!" The man snarled into the other end of the phone. "Do you think I don't know when someone's lying to me? The kid is showing none of the signs! Hey kid! What did the guy who picked you up look like?"

Tsuna jumped, and then forced himself to cringe back. "He was big guy, like a giant. He said he I could leave my relatives and go to school." He said, thinking of the big burly man who had rescued Harry Potter from his relatives house. Casting his mind to his father this time he fixed the man's face firmly in his mind. "He was blond… and he said… to call him Papa."

"Of course he did." the man snorted in disgust as he turned back to his phone conversation. "Can't have the kid's body double calling him anything else can we?"

He'd bought it. Bought it as if everything he'd just said was the truth… All of it was the truth in its own way, some of it had just occured in his dreams instead of reality. Tsuna almost wanted to crow at that victory as he fell back into the crystal clarity he'd been pushing back in favour of the more emotional intensity of his flames, and eyed the door he hadn't considered going for earlier. Now that the man was completely sure he had the wrong target… it was about time he made his escape.

He wasn't going to be able to keep up the terrified act for very much longer.

There were two exits. The window the man was now staring out of and the doorway leading out of the room. Out of the two the window would probably be the easiest to get to but not necessarily the safest, one leap and he'd be outside and he could use his flames to cushion his fall. However the man still had the gun in his other hand and seemed too agitated to put it down, the man would shoot him while he was falling out of the window.

He was going to have to take his chances with the door.

The building was unfamiliar, he had no idea where the exits were or even if the doors were locked or not but it was his only real hope for a getaway. The man, having had his plan busted, was now planning on using him as a believable hostage at a later date.

"… almost perfect double! All we'd have to do is bleach his hair and give him some contact lenses and he'd fool anyone! We can even make it look like we killed him here and just keep him till he becomes useful! Sawada can't keep his kid in hiding forever and when he finally brings him out we'll have the perfect bluff!"

Okay. Yeah. Now would be a good time to get going. He didn't want to hear any more of this. He'd want to hit his own head against the wall in sheer pain. Idiot. This guy was an _idiot_ and he'd overestimated this guy's intelligence by a mile! How exactly did the man think he was going to be able to keep him?

Urgh. Time to make tracks. If he stayed any longer the man might come up with a few MORE brilliant ideas.

Letting go of the rope he had been clutching onto Tsuna coiled it up and tied a careful loop around one end of it. The man had so helpfully supplied the rope, it would be a shame leave it behind and not use it, slipping his sneakers off to ensure complete silence Tsuna tiptoed across the room and slipped out of the open door. God this man really was a complete idiot, at least LOCK THE DOOR if you were planning on keeping someone hostage!

Using the two years' worth of experience he had at sneaking out of his own house Tsuna managed to close the door behind him without alerting the man of his getaway. He secured the loop he had created around the handle of the door and then tied the rope to the other door across the short hallway. He didn't have enough rope to completely trap the man in the room but hopefully this would buy him enough time to get out of the building.

Finding the stairwell was easy, the building was a simple one and Tsuna all but bolted down the stairs. He almost darted right out of the building when he remembered that the man, if he hadn't already discovered him missing, would still be looking out the window still. If he darted straight out into the street… the man could spot him. Easily. Should he try and make a run for it anyway? Would the man shoot him at this distance? Would he want to 'waste' the opportunity to keep him for the plan he was cooking up with whoever had hired him?

A filthy stream of swearwords, a rattling noise and several loud 'twips' sounded. Gunshots. He'd bet his left leg that the man had shot through the door to get out and those the sound had been the silencer altering the sound of the gunshots.

Right. He didn't exactly have a choice. It was either take the chance and run or have his plan fall through.

Was that even a choice?

He ran.

OoO

Lal Mirch didn't hold back. When she heard that someone had put a hit out on Sawada Iemitsu's son she kicked his face in. Or rather she gave it her best shot, sadly the man survived with just a bruise to his name but it didn't stop her from wanting to continue kicking the man up and down the headquarters. She knew how word had gotten out about his family, the idiot was always bragging, waving pictures around to just about anyone he was talking to and apparently hadn't given a single thought to the consequences of doing so.

Now Iemitsu's innocent son was going to pay the price, a seven year old Sky with his flames sealed, cut down before he even had a chance to furl those new and fragile wings. She didn't want to see it. Didn't want to have to be the one to discover the kid's body but what choice did she have in going out to search? None. The thought of such a young Sky out lost in the cold with a hit-man on his tail made her blood boil. Worse, she knew who was responsible for it and wanted to kill the moron herself.

On the off chance she could find the boy before the hit man did… she was going to be making sure Iemitsu paid for his lapse in protocol. In blood and pain. What was the point of preparing a body double if Iemitsu was going to blow the ruse before it could even be used? Now they were going to have to figure out what to do with the young Rain they had intended on introducing to the mafia world as Iemitsu's son! Well, at the very least Basil would make a good future addition to the CEDEF with a little training...

She wouldn't have been able to keep herself on standby for word to come back to her even if she had wanted to… staying in the Sawada household was that uncomfortable. Merely being in the presence of Iemitsu's wife was enough to make her hair stand on end and her skin crawl. Seeing a former Guardian brought so low, someone who'd had so much potential… was too unnerving to stomach.

Sawada Nana, formerly Tachibana, had once been a powerful woman. Fierce and charismatic her potential as a Guardian had been overwhelming. Nana had been the leader of a small gang of teenagers when she'd met Iemitsu and she had been so raw with her instincts as a budding Mist that instead of trying to get to know him… she'd punched him in the face. She'd been hit so hard by Sky Attraction that she'd lashed back in the only way she'd known how to at the time.

Iemitsu still called it 'love at first sight'.

Upon Harmonizing with the man she'd fully unlocked her flame. The woman had been fine with it at the time, to her the Guardian bond she'd formed had been the most romantic thing she'd ever heard of and the explanation of flames and how it all connected to the Mafia sent the woman into raptures. Training to use her flames had revealed an uncommonly powerful flame and an effortless ability to channel it. For a while she had been considered as the Mafia world's brightest up-and-comer.

Right up until it came time for her to use her flames in battle against a real opponent.

The attack had come out of seemingly nowhere and she been ill-prepared for it, hadn't even come anywhere near close to finishing her training. Had, in fact, only just started learning how to channel her flames through her chosen weapon, a flame-reactive bokken, and had reacted on instinct. When she'd gone to use her flames to help Iemitsu she'd gotten carried away and let the floodgates loose. She'd completely destroyed someone's mind and irreparably broken them. In her horror over what she'd done and how effortless it had been… she'd turned her flame on herself and rejected it so completely that she'd effectively sealed her own flame.

These days the woman, now a shadow of her former self, used her flame-reactive bokken as a carpet beater and to reach spider webs and dust. There weren't enough words to describe how uncomfortable it was to be around the woman. She'd lost everything about herself, she couldn't remember a thing about flames or the mafia, she'd lost her fire, her edge, her intelligence, common sense and had even lost touch with the world around her.

If she hadn't been Harmonized to Iemitsu, and if the man hadn't felt so guilty over the entire mess, he probably would have left her to try and give her a future away from the Mafia. The idiot _was_ the type to run away from his problems if he couldn't solve them. Iemitsu could have broken the Harmonization at that point, the only one out of them that would have suffered the backlash would have been the man himself. Nana would have effectively been set free and both could have gone their separate ways, however…

Nana had fallen pregnant.

A Sky born to a Sealed Mist Guardian and her estranged Sky. A miracle born out of tragedy and now that little miracle was going to be cut down before he could fully fledge because his father was a _complete moron_. The kind of moron that bragged about his son's potential, the kind of _retarded idiot_ who crowed from the rooftops that his son had manifested as a Sky and then proceeded to draw the kind of attention that only a Sky could, the kind of attention that had EVERYONE looking. Two years' worth of work spent looking, (and finding!), a passable body double wasted and a rare and precious baby was going to have to pay the ultimate price for it.

She couldn't help it.

Lal launched herself off of her perch on the kitchen table and planted her feet into the moron's face just for the principal of it. Iemitsu was organizing the search from his house, with his oblivious Mist keeping herself out of it by cooking up a storm in the kitchen, lost in the throes of being so close to her Sky and completely unaware that her son was even missing. Kicking the man in the face was the least she could do to wear off the burning edge of irritation crawling up her spine, that and he made a pretty good target.

She couldn't stand being in the house much more than she could stand her own thought-process anymore.

Punting the useless excuse of a Sky aside she made for the door and ignored the groan of pain coming from the man. She had to ignore it or she'd be tempted to turn around and give him something REAL to complain about and she didn't have the TIME to kick some brains past the idiot's damnably thick skull and into his empty cranium. She was going to save that thought for another time though, when she had the time to savour it and plan Every. Little. Bit. Of. It.

Right now? She was going to go out and make herself useful, maybe even try to sense for the kid. The boy had manifested as a Sky and a situation like this would hopefully be enough to push against the seal Timoteo had placed on the boy. It was a long-shot that dependant on a lot of luck as well as the boy's will to live… but it was about the only way she figured she could stand to pass the time until she either got word the boy had been found or she found the boy herself.

They hadn't made it to Namimori in time to catch Tsuna as he left school for home, even with the boy staying back late to help close up the library. They'd arrived just an hour too late as the janitor had spotted the boy leaving as he'd been closing the gate. Asking around the neighbourhood revealed that the kid never took the same route home two days in a row and liked to explore. In abstract that made for a good habit for a future Mafioso to get into but right now it was more than a little frustrating when trying to track down the boy's last whereabouts.

Her levels of irritation were hitting critical pressure.

School had ended for the day, children were everywhere and questioning them was an exercise in futility. By all accounts the young Sky actively avoided contact with his peers, was either incredibly shy, confrontational or invisible depending on who you asked. Getting clear feedback out of one of the boy's classmates was currently driving her up the wall. Grinding her teeth against the urge to kick the kid she was cross-examining she resisted and wished she hadn't jumped down from the rooftops when she'd felt a Flame-Active child in the vicinity.

This one was testing her ability to keep a cool head.

Questions were met with questions and trying to get a straight answer out of him was making her wish she really COULD kick the kid. Wide and innocent puppy-like hazel brown eyes, spiked black hair and a easy going grin on the face of the young Rain she'd come across was a far cry from the blond Sky she was looking for. If she'd been hoping she'd find Tsunayoshi right away she'd been sorely disappointed.

"Have you or have you NOT seen Sawada Tsunayoshi." She repeated, a hairs breath away from kicking the kid anyway, protocol or no protocol. She wasn't allowed to kick him, this was just a kid, a classic rain for god's sake! Even if she kicked him it wouldn't get her the answers she was looking for.

Damn it, if anyone would have any sort of idea where the kid was then surely a local Flame-Active would have seen or noticed _something_. A Sky drew attention at all times, seal or no seal, and a Flame-Active as young as this one would have been helpless against that kind of pull. He should have noticed something, anything that would give them a clue as to the whereabouts or fate of the boy everyone was looking for.

Hazel eyes stared down at her with a clear question mark and the kid's head tilted to the side, it was an expression she was fast learning to hate. "Sawada? Are you looking for his house? He doesn't live this way, he lives down that way." The kid pointed out in the direction she'd clearly come from. "Are you lost? Do you want me to show you the way?"

"I am not _lost_! I'm looking for _Sawada Tsunayoshi! _Do. You. Know. Where. He. Is."

"Oh? Are you playing Hide and Seek? I love that game! Can I play?" The boy asked brightly, a gormless grin washing away the earnest helpfulness he'd been sporting before.

She almost couldn't believe it. Here she was, a TRAINED INTERROGATOR and she was having trouble getting one straight answer out of a seven year old. Lal would have been impressed with this kid's ability to lead people into circular conversations had this been any other time, under any other circumstance and if she believed for even a _second_ that this kid was actually doing it on purpose instead of being just that stupid.

"No! I am not playing a game, no you can't play! I just want to find out where Sawada Tsunayoshi is! Have you seen him at all today?" She asked through gritted teeth. Was this a Guardian's instincts rising to the surface to protect the local Unattached Sky? She wished she could believe it. It would have made it easier to ignore the rising NEED to kick the kid across the street.

"You don't have to be so mean, I just wanted to play too." The boy pouted, a kicked puppy look replacing the gormless grin on his face.

Lal felt her patience snap with an almost audible twang, the only thing that saved the dark haired seven year old from a well-deserved boot was the body that ran around the corner and tripped over the both of them. Everyone fell into the street, the wet _puddle-streaked_ street, and ended up in a glorious tangle.

"Sorry!" the body shouted before scrambling up and haring off as a second figure, larger, older, and with a very familiar object in hand, rounded the corner in hot pursuit.

The boy who had run into them was battered, one cheek darkened with a fresh bruise with blood drying around the edge of his mouth, his hair wet with the rain and dirty from the mud he'd fallen into, he was missing his shoes and one of his socks but… this was the boy she was looking for.

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!" The young rain who fallen with her yelled out, scrabbling at a pocket and hurling the baseball he'd found there at the man's head, the shot missed but she could appreciate the sentiment.

"Get inside!" She barked, finally giving the boy the kick he'd earned earlier and sent him barrelling into a nearby store. "Don't follow!"

"DAD! CALL THE POLICE! THERE'S A GUY WITH A GUN!"

Oh goddamn it, she wished she'd kicked the boy UNCONSIOUS! Now they were going to have to operate around the police! Unslinging her own gun from where she had it strapped across her back under her cloak she chased after the soon-to-be-dead hit-man.

He would reach Sawada Tsunayoshi over her dead body.

OoO

Tsuna didn't need to turn around to realize that someone else had joined in on the wild goose-chase he was leading his would-be killer and kidnapper on, he felt it. Whoever had joined in on the pursuit also felt heads and away more dangerous than the man he was currently leading around by the nose. Which was just brilliant, the cherry on the top of proverbial cake.

It hadn't taken him very long to realize exactly which part of Namimori the man had decided to squirrel him away in. Hell the location wasn't even that far from his own house, which had probably helped with the planning that had gone into this stunt, as little of it as there seemed to have been. He could have easily lost his pursuer within minutes, it wouldn't even have been all that hard, but that would have given the man the opportunity to get into his car and meet him on the way before he made it home. Not only that but the man might have even have been brave enough, or stupid enough, to confront his mother.

His only other option was to lead the man around by his nose until they drew enough attention. Until the man got flustered and angry enough to forget exactly where they were and where Tsuna was leading them to, forget that he was supposed to be concealing that gun and be avoiding attention.

Tsuna was going to lead the man directly into police custody.

He'd already sacrificed a sock to the cause, almost losing the man despite making as much noise getting away as he possibly could. Both to draw the kidnapper's attention and to get bystanders to notice exactly what was going on. He'd had to drop his sock in a clearly visible area and then kick a can across the street to get the man to spot him again.

"FUCKING BRAT!" the man screamed as he rounded the corner, close to frothing at the mouth and swinging the gun he was openly baring directly down at him.

He ducked into another alleyway. Good, the man looked like he'd completely forgotten where he was and had actually lost his temper enough that he'd finally pulled the gun out in broad daylight for everyone to see. Now would be about the perfect time to lead the man to the police station they'd half circled around, especially since Tsuna was starting to run out of the strength to keep running.

The crystal clarity he'd been seeing the world in was fading fast and the hot, emotional effects of his flames, the effects that he'd been seeking earlier, were starting to creep back into his system. Fumbling for the silver flask in his pocket Tsuna scrabbled at the lid, opened it and choked down the precious little liquid he had left in the flask, hoping the boost of strength would be enough to get him to the police station without blacking out.

His goal was just around the corner and Tsuna had been ducking around them practically since the very start of the chase. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to guess which direction he was going to take, but just in case… Shoving his now-empty flask back into his pocket Tsuna kicked his last sock off. Might as well, he wasn't about to give the man any credit for non-existent brain cells. Throw him one last bit of bait in order to get him exactly where he wanted him.

Which was right into the path of a descending Tonfa.

Tsuna allowed himself skid to his knees as he slipped past the police detective that had stepped directly behind him as he slid past and turned to watch as the man dealt with his kidnapper in two precise blows. One knocked the gun out of the man's hand and the other rammed down into his pursuer's temple, it was all done so smoothly Tsuna would have thought the movement had been rehearsed had he not seen the shock that had flashed across the downed man's face as the gun flew out of his hand.

The gun itself landed with a clatter at his feet and Tsuna absently reached for it, it was too dangerous to just leave it lying there, but the police detective stopped him with a gentle hand.

"Shh, it's alright now." The detective said, voice as gentle as the hands that were now cautiously moving to pick him up. "Well done in making it this far on your own, but it's safe now. You're safe."

Tsuna was easily pulled up and settled in the man's arms in the same smooth movement it took for the detective to sweep the gun away to another police officer with his foot. The man casually carried him away from the sudden swarming of uniforms dogpiling his now-unconscious kidnapper and handed off the Tonfa he had used to drop the man onto another passing officer.

Looking past the hapless criminal Tsuna didn't take his eyes off the shadows of the alleyway he'd just left and continued to stare until he was carried in through the doors of the police station. His second pursuer, the one he had picked up after tripping over the two kids earlier, had stayed in the alleyway. He opened his mouth to tell the police officer but thought better of it. He hadn't seen the second pursuer and if questioned the man the police officers were now carting off into custody could very well claim to have been working alone. The only proof he'd had that he even had a second pursuer wasn't so much as proof as it had been his gut feeling, the police might even think he'd imagined it.

Safe. Yeah, he was. For now.

He had done everything he could have done in getting away, whatever happened after this… he could be sure he couldn't have done anything differently. If this hadn't been enough then he was going to have to get creative the next time someone came after him. The only other option he'd had was outright killing his kidnapper and that was a step he wasn't willing to take. Not yet. Possibly not ever.

Slumping onto the detective's shoulder Tsuna let his eyes shutter closed and slowly let the hold he had on the lid sitting over his flames slip and was unconscious before he even fully let go.

OoO

Sawada Iemitsu couldn't help but think he deserved every bruise Lal dished out on her return to the house. After the mad scramble that had taken place trying to beat the ambulance to the precinct, pulling together an illusion to make everyone think they were just another team of medics there on-call, trying to keep Tsuna alive on the way to the hospital and… he couldn't bring himself to go back into his son's room.

He dragged himself away from the door, past the sharp eyed glare of the Detective who had planted himself just outside his son's room, and outside into the parking lot where he climbed into the van they all piled into to get Tsuna to the hospital and let himself slump into the passengers seat.

He didn't deserve to be a father.

Lal twisted his ear from where she was sitting on his shoulder, having had to be in close contact with him to keep his disguise as a doctor up, and pulled back her illusion. "You don't have the time to be sitting here moping, go out there and start acting your part! You got word from Nana and took the taxi here, lucky you were in Tokyo. Go!" She barked, bodily kicking him out of the van and back into the parking lot.

Iemitsu caught his 'luggage' with the back of his head. He may have been able to catch or dodge it had he not been so flame-depleted, it had taken almost the entirety of his reserves to keep Tsuna alive long enough to get him to the hospital and then to supply an emergency transfer. He'd had to stay and work with the CEDEF medics for the entirety of the operation, Tsuna had rejected every Sun Flame introduced into his system so violently they had been afraid of trying again after two people. In the end it had taken Iemitsu shifting his own Sky Flame into a Sun Resonance and then working under the direction of the Medics in order keep him alive.

He was stable for now, after god-knew how many hours of heart-stopping fear and panic. Hours of scrambling to not only provide the flames his son needed but to keep it steady, keep it in the Sun Resonation, (he had never been so thankful for the Sky ability to mimic other flames), and focus it onto his son's barely-breathing body.

The sheer amount of damage they'd had to fix, none of which had been caused by the hit-man, had been borderline unbelievable. Or rather, it would have been unbelievable had he not known what would do that to a body so completely unprepared for the kind of flame his son had called upon. Tsuna had not only activated his flames, he had felt threatened enough to push past the seal Nono had placed over them and had pulled his Hyper Intuition up at the same time. Lal had seen the orange in the boy's eyes when he'd tripped over her but she had assumed he'd been in the first stages of his Dying Will.

This was bad, at seven years old there was no way Tsuna was ready to handle the flames he was drawing on. Unearthing his Hyper Intuition from underneath the seal meant that he must have been a breath away from entering Hyper Dying Will Mode, probably HAD done for a brief moment. It was a minor miracle Tsuna hadn't killed himself outright by doing so, the shock of introducing a flame of that kind of purity and strength into a system that had been sealed for two years… this had been a very close call.

Dragging himself up off the ground Iemitsu picked up the duffle-bag Lal had punted at his head and knew that if he'd had the strength for it he'd have burned through the handle. This could not be allowed to happen again, Tsuna might not be so lucky next time. They needed to get word out, put up smoke-screens, make an example of the hit man who had gone after his son and lay down false information. Damage control, they needed to do a lot of it. Soon. Opening his mouth to say something to that effect Iemitsu caught a cell-phone with his face.

"… and call your wife! She needs to know where her son is and I'm not doing it!"

Slouching, he peeled the phone off his face and bit his tongue against the complaint that wanted to escape. He'd almost lost his son, couldn't she be nicer to him for once?

Lal's eyes glinted from where she was watching him from the seat he'd just 'vacated' and knew instantly that she'd seen the look on his face. "What?" she asked, jumping up to balance on the edge of the open window between them. "You think I'm going to send you on with a pat on your back? Who's idiot fault do you think this is? Don't worry though, when we get back I'll make sure we review the standard protocols. The ones you ignored and nearly got your son killed."

He was a grown man. He shouldn't feel this intimidated.

Lal's feet speared into his gut. "But since you can't walk into a hospital on your own I'll be more than happy to guide you back in. March."

Wheezing Iemitsu didn't bother protesting, he'd been stalling. He knew it, Lal had seen it and he wished it hadn't been so necessary for her to 'escort' him. He'd never thought he'd both be grateful he had Sky flames and regret it so much at the same time. On one hand he'd been able to save his son's life but on the other…

His instincts as a Sky wanted to crush his budding Rival before he got any stronger.

Tsuna had only been five years old when he'd lit his flames, the undeniable strength and purity of his flame had been incredible. In the two years since then that quality had only gotten stronger and Iemitsu could only imagine what that flame would be like in ten years or in just five. When he started to hit his maturity as a Sky he'd start drawing Guardians and once he had the full set, a Full Harmony, those flames would only get stronger.

He didn't even what to know what his reaction would have been if Nono hadn't sealed Tsuna's flames. If he hadn't been there in that moment his son had fallen out of that tree, if he'd been alone when he'd been confronted with those flames, coming from such a young and fragile Sky with no Guardians to shield him…

The Ninth had been able to raise his children, all FOUR of them having manifested with Sky Flames, without feeling threatened by them. The man's Guardians protected him from that kind of instinct, it was one of the side-benefits of achieving a Full Harmony. This was what he got for allowing his depression to rule over his need to gather the full set of Guardians.

Iemitsu had three options.

He could wait until Tsuna had gathered his own Guardians and his flame registered how bad an idea it would be to try and tangle with that. He could try and complete his own 'set' of Guardians and hope their influence stabilized his instincts and finally… he could continue keeping his distance.

Or he could just do all of the above.

His heart clenched at the idea that he'd have to open himself up to another Guardian, especially after what had happened to Nana, and it felt like an open wound tearing across his soul but if he failed to do it…

Iemitsu let his feet lead him back into the hospital and absently gave his name to the receptionist, only barely hearing her and pretended to listen as she gave him directions to his son's room. The detective who had planted himself outside Tsuna's room followed him inside and waited as he stared down at his son's unconscious form, eyes tracing the dark, now purple-black, bruise that decorated his cheek and the surface wounds they'd had to leave alone to keep up appearances.

Depending on who you asked in the Mafia world there was always a different name for it. Some call it Sky Rejection, others called it Rivalry or Intimidation, some Famiglias called it Overcast or Sundering. No matter what you called it was the same thing. It was when a Sky turned hostile to another Sky for what seemed to be no other reason than pure animal instinct. He was lucky, SO lucky Nono had been there to seal Tsuna's flame. If his own father reacted like that to his flame, felt threatened enough to even consider than he didn't even want to imagine what another, unrelated Sky would have done.

The best case scenario was that Tsuna would have found himself with another Sky wanting to play parent with him, the worst was Sky Rivalry and subsequent squashing of said Rival.

He was not going to fall prey to it. This was the same little baby he'd held in his arms, the same little miracle that had once loved to sit sweetly in his arms, the bright and warm presence that had once been a joy to be around. He was not going to let his god-damned instincts ruin that.

If that meant he was going to have to have Lal 'supervise' him, open himself up to another Guardian or whatever… he'd do it.

This was his _SON_.

He started at the sound of a throat clearing and turned to the Detective, eyeing the badge the man flashed at him briefly.

"Sawada Iemitsu? If you don't mind I'd like to ask you a few questions…"

OoO

Hibari Minoru couldn't have been more disgusted with Sawada Tsunayoshi's parents if they'd arrived at the hospital covered in manure. They'd arrived separately, the father first and then the mother.

Sawada Iemitsu came dressed in an overall that was too clean and too new to support the claim that the man worked for an oil company. Supposing the man DID work for an oil company why would he still be wearing his work uniform and why would it still be that pristine? Why would he be wearing said uniform if he'd been at a Tokyo office? Shouldn't he have been wearing a suit instead? A glance at the man's luggage showed the duffle bag may- well have been bought brand-new as well.

That wasn't what disgusted him though. What disgusted him was in how the man had looked in on his son, given him a quick once-over and had retreated into the hallway to answer his questions. What kind of father didn't even reach forward to touch his son? Also he hadn't liked the look on the man's face as he'd been looking down at the boy. That had not been the expression a loving father should be sporting upon witnessing his son lying injured in a hospital bed.

Inquiries revealed that the man hadn't been home in over two years and had only just been recently, and apparently very temporarily, been transferred to the Tokyo office. He didn't have any enemies that he knew of and had been the one to call in the Missing Person's report when his son failed to come home from school. Which begged the question, how had the man known his son was late if he hadn't been home in two years? How had he known that his son hadn't just gone over to a friend's place? What made him think he was missing? Also why wasn't the man plastered to his kid's side? Just the very fact he hadn't seen his child for two years should have been enough to warrant wanting to glue himself to the bedside, if not crawl in next to him, but to be unmoved with his son so injured?

The boy had been attacked by a gun-toting nutcase and he didn't even care to stick around. The man had all but vanished after answering his questions, not even bothering to stay long enough for the boy's mother to show up.

Speaking of the mother, where was she right now? She'd gone home too. Showing up hours after her husband had left and her reason for showing up late had been because she'd been 'packing everything away'. Further questioning into that statement revealed that she hadn't meant joining her husband in Tokyo like he'd assumed, but had been talking of the feast she had apparently cooked up in celebration for her husband's return.

Iemitsu had 'put her heart at ease' as far as the kidnapping went, 'explained' the situation to her and had 'calmed her down'. Minoru didn't know what the hell that meant but shining a light in her eyes when he 'fumbled' his penlight showed that her pupils reacted normally. She sounded about as high as a kite but nothing in the blood test he'd had a nurse administer as a 'routine test' showed anything suspicious. No drugs in her system, the only alcohol they found was well below the legal limit, most probably consumed while making the feast the woman thought was more important to save from spoiling than rushing to see her hospitalized son.

No real parent would dream of letting their child wake up alone after an experience like the one Sawada Tsunayoshi had gone through and yet the boy's father was on his way back to Tokyo. His mother, after cooing over his sleeping form and fussing a bit with his blankets, remarked that it was getting late and then left. To go back home.

He hadn't even thought twice about contacting Child Protective Services. He'd never been on a case that had him reaching for his phone to call them quite this early in the investigative stages before, but there was something clearly wrong with this family. The father had disappeared within moments of seeing his son, probably wouldn't pop his head up out of the woodwork again without being prompted by his wife, and the woman herself… had more than a few screws loose in her head.

It had been three days since the boy had been admitted into the hospital and in that time-frame she'd only visited two times. Both times had been late in the afternoon and had only lasted long enough to pet the kid on the head, press a kiss onto the unbruised side of the boy's face, fuss with his blankets a little more and then leave again.

He tried to imagine his sister-in-law acting like with his nephew and just couldn't picture it, Yun would have bundled Kyouya up into her lap within half a heartbeat and cuddled him within an inch of his life. Kyouya would have squirmed and tried to escape but it wouldn't have done him any good. A mother, a REAL mother, would fuss and smother her child with affection no matter their child's temperament, would glue herself to her son's side and not BUDGE until she got him home again. Minoru's older brother Satoshi would have dropped everything to be by his son's side and would have moved heaven and hell in order to see justice was done. Sawada Nana was completely lacking in any maternal instinct whatsoever and he didn't even want to think about Sawada Iemitsu again.

"Fucking herbivores…" Minoru muttered under his breath, borrowing a bit of his nephew's vocabulary for this one moment, he was stating to understand what Kyouya meant when he complained, (as much as the boy ever complained), about being surrounded by them.

He'd stayed at the hospital in Tsunayoshi's parents stead, at the very least the boy would have ONE familiar face to wake up to, (if he remembered any of what happened to him) and had set himself up on the bed next to his. Social Services had been quick to respond and their representative Hayashi Rin hadn't taken very long to come to the same conclusion as he had. She was going to have to interview the boy when he woke up and then the mother but she didn't like what she saw either.

How exactly did the mother of a Narcoleptic seven-year-old let that child walk to school and back? Alone? And then not worry herself to death when he didn't come home? The fact it had been the boy's father to call in the Missing Person's report had the social worker frowning as well.

A full examination of Sawada Tsunayoshi revealed a large and sprawling array of bumps, scrapes and bruises. Some of which had to have been caused by the kidnapper but others, far too many to be comfortable with, were too old to have been caused by the gunman and had already faded to yellow and were well on their way to healing. The kid was thin too, not _overly_ so, but certainly under the average weight he should be given his age.

Whatever the case was he would, hopefully, be getting his answers soon.

Sawada Tsunayoshi was waking up.

OoO

Chapter End.

Holy crap. If I thought writing the LAST chapter was a bitch, THIS one took the cake. It didn't want to end. This was a good place to stop so I'll let you guys have it now instead of making you wait a few weeks for the next chapter.

So back stories for Iemitsu and Nana and an explanation for the need to Seal Tsuna's flames away. Excuse me while I go and crawl into bed now. Ima gonna rock that Foetal Curl like you wouldn't believe.

SO tired.


End file.
